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OLD LAMPS FOR NEW 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOM HAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



OLD LAMPS FOR NEW 



BY 
E. V. LUCAS 

AUTHOR OF "OVER BEMERTON's " 
"MR. INGLESIDE," ETC. 



Ntb3 g0rk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1911 



* J 









Copyright, 191 i, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, igii. 



Norfajooft ^resg 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CI,A2957i)0 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The School for Sympathy ..... i 

On the Track of Vermeer 7 

The Fool's Paradise 45 

Consolers of Genius 50 

An American Hero 60 

Mr. Hastings 66 

Thoughts on Tan 73 

On Leaving one's Beat 77 

The Deer Park 82 

The Rarities 87 

The Owl 94 

The Unusual Morning 100 

The Embarrassed Eliminators . . . .105 

A Friend of the Town 115 

Gypsy 120 

A Sale 125 

A Georgian Town 141 

MUS PeNFOLD — AND BiLLY I47 

Theologians at the Mitre 158 

The Windmill 178 

A Glimpse of Civilization 183 

Her Royal 'Tumnal Tintiness .... 188 
vii 



Old Lamps for New 



Five Characters — 

I. The Kind Red Lioness . 
II. A Darling of the Gods . 

III. The Nut 

IV. The Master of thf- New Suburb 
V. The Second Fiddle 

Without Souls — 

I. The Builders .... 
II. Bush's Grievance 
III. A London Landmark 
The Interviewer's Bag — 

I. The Autograrher . 
II. The Equalizer .... 

III. A Hardy Annual 

IV. Another of Our Conquerors 
V. A Case for Loyola . 

The Letter N — A Tragedy in High Life 
The New Chauffeur .... 
The Fir-tree: Revised Version . 
The Life Spherical .... 

Four Fables — 

I. The Stopped Clock . 
II. Truth and Another 

III. The Exemplar . . . 

IV. The Good Man and Cupid 



195 
198 
201 

202 
207 

212 
216 
218 

221 

223 
224 
226 
230 

233 
240 

243 
250 

254 
255 
255 
256 



OLD LAMPS FOR NEW 



OLD LAMPS FOR NEW 

The School for Sympathy <:> ^> ^;^ 

I HAD heard a great deal about Miss Beam's 
school, but not till last week did the chance 
come to visit it. 

The cabman drew up at a gate in an old wall, 
about a mile out of the town. I noticed as I 
was waiting for him to give me change that the 
Cathedral spire was visible down the road. I rang 
the bell, the gate automatically opened, and I 
found myself in a pleasant garden facing a square 
red ample Georgian house, with the thick white 
window-frames that to my eyes always suggest 
warmth and welcome and stability. There was 
no one in sight but a girl of about twelve, with 
her eyes covered with a bandage, who was being 
led carefully between the flower-beds by a little 
boy of some four years her junior. She stopped, 
and evidently asked who it was that had come in, 
and he seemed to be describing me to her. Then 
they passed on, and I entered the door which a 
smiling parlour-maid — that pretty sight ! — was 
holding open for me. 

B I 



Old Lamps for New 

Miss Beam was all that I had expected — middle- 
aged, authoritative, kindly, and understanding. 
Her hair was beginning to turn grey, and her 
figure had a fulness likely to be comforting to a 
homesick child. 

We talked idly for a little while, and then I asked 
her some questions as to her scholastic methods, 
which I had heard were simple. 

"Well," she said, "we don't as a matter of fact 
do much teaching here. The children that come 
to me — small girls and smaller boys — have very 
few formal lessons: no more than is needful to 
get application into them, and those only of the 
simplest — spelling, adding, subtracting, multiply- 
ing, writing. The rest is done by reading to them 
and by illustrated discourses, during which they 
have to sit still and keep their hands quiet. 
Practically there are no other lessons at all." 

"But I have heard so much," I said, "about the 
originahty of your system." 

Miss Beam smiled. "Ah, yes," she said. "I 
am coming to that. The real aim of this school 
is not so much to instil thought as thoughtfulness 
— humanity, citizenship. That is the ideal I have 
always had, and happily there are parents good 
enough to trust me to try and put it into execution. 
Look out of the window a minute, will you?" 

I went to the window, which commanded a large 
garden and playground at the back. 



The School for Sympathy 

"What do you see?" Miss Beam asked. 

"I see some very beautiful grounds," I said, 
"and a lot of jolly children; but what perplexes 
me, and pains me too, is to notice that they are not 
all as healthy and active as I should wish. As I 
came in I saw one poor little thing being led 
about owing to some trouble with her eyes, and 
now 1 can see two more in the same plight ; while 
there is a girl with a crutch just under the window 
watching the others at play. She seems to be a 
hopeless cripple." 

Miss Beam laughed. "Oh, no," she said; 
"she's not lame, really; this is only her lame day. 
Nor are those others blind ; it is only their blind 
day." I must have looked very much astonished, 
for she laughed again. "There you have an es- 
sential part of our system in a nutshell. In order 
to get a real appreciation and understanding of 
misfortune into these young minds we make them 
participants in misfortune too. In the course of 
the term every child has one Mind day, one lame 
day, one deaf day, one maimed day, one dumb 
day. During the blind day their eyes are ban- 
daged absolutely, and it is a point of honour not to 
peep. The bandage is put on overnight ; they 
wake blind. This means that they need assistance 
in everything, and other children are told off to 
help them and lead them about. It is educative 
to both of them — the blind and the helpers. 

3 



Old Lamps for New 

"There is no privation about it," Miss Beam 
continued. ''Every one is very kind and it is 
really something of a joke, although, of course, be- 
fore the day is over the reality of the affliction 
must be apparent even to the least thoughtful. 
The blind day is, of course, really the worst," she 
went on, "but some of the children tell me that 
the dumb day is the most dreaded. There, of 
course, the child must exercise will-power only, 
for the mouth is not bandaged. . . . But come 
down into the garden and see for yourself how 
the children like it." 

Miss Beam led me to one of the bandaged girls, 
a Httle merry thing, whose eyes under the folds 
were, I felt sure, as black as ash-buds. "Here's a 
gentleman come to talk to you," said Miss Beam, 
and left us. 

"Don't you ever peep?" I asked, by way of an 
opening. 

"Oh, no," she exclaimed; "that would be cheat- 
ing. But I'd no idea it was so awful to be blind. 
You can't see a thing. One feels one is going to 
be hit by something every moment. Sitting down's 
such a relief." 

"Are your guides kind to you?" I asked. 

"Pretty good. Not so careful as I shall be 
when it's my turn. Those that have been blind 
already are the best. It's perfectly ghastly not to 
see. I wish you'd try ! " 

4 



The School for Sympathy 

"Shall I lead you anywhere?" I asked. 

"Oh, yes," she said; "let's go for a little walk. 
Only you must tell me about things. I shall be 
so glad when to-day's over. The other bad days 
can't be half as bad as this. Having a leg tied 
up and hopping about on a crutch is almost fun, I 
guess. Having an arm tied up is a little more 
troublesome, because you have to get your food 
cut up for you, and so on; but it doesn't really 
matter. And as for being deaf for a day, I shan't 
mind that — at least, not much. But being blind 
is so frightening. My head aches all the time, 
just from dodging things that probably aren't 
there. Where are we now? " 

"In the playground," I said, "going towards the 
house. Miss Beam is walking up and down the 
terrace with a tall girl." 

"What has the girl got on?" my companion 
asked. 

"A blue serge skirt and pink blouse." 

"I think it's Millie," she said. "What colour 
hair?" 

"Very light," I said. 

"Yes, that's Millie. She's the head girl. She's 
awfully decent." 

"There's an old man tying up roses," I said. 

"Yes, that's Peter. He's the gardener. He's 
hundreds of years old!" 

"And here comes a dark girl in red, on crutches." 

S 



Old Lamps for New 

"Yes," she said; ''that's Beryl." 

And so we walked on, and in steering this little 
thing about I discovered that I was ten times 
more thoughtful already than I had any notion 
of, and also that the necessity of describing the 
surroundings to another makes them more interest- 
ing. 

When Miss Beam came to release me, I was 
quite sorry to go, and said so. 

"Ah!" she replied; "then there is something 
in my system after all!" 

I walked back to the town murmuring (inac- 
curately as ever) the lines : — 

Can I see another's woe 
And not share their sorrow too ? 
O no, never can it be, 
Never, never, can it be. 



On the Track of Vermeer 



^:;:> ^;::> 



NOT long ago the papers contained a little 
paragraph stating that Herr Bredius, the 
curator of the Mauritshuis Gallery at the Hague, 
had just returned from a journey of exploration in 
Russia, bringing back with him over a hundred 
valuable pictures of the Dutch School which he 
had discovered there, in country and city man- 
sions and even in farmhouses; for the Russian 
collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, as is well known, greatly esteemed and 
desired (as who must not?) Dutch art. That was 
all that the paragraph said, and since that was all 
we may feel quite sure that among those hundred 
and more pictures there was nothing from the 
divinely gifted hand of Jan Vermeer of Delft; be- 
cause the discovery of a new picture by Jan Ver- 
meer of Delft is something not merely for mention 
in a paragraph but among the special news — 
something with which to agitate the cables of the 
world. 

Can you conceive of a more delightful existence 
than that of Herr Bredius — to be when at home 
the conservator of such masterpieces as hang in the 

7 



Old Lamps for New 

Mauritshuis on the banks of the Vyver, in the 
beautiful and bland Dutch capital (some of which 
are his own property, and only lent to the gallery), 
and when in mind to travel, to leave the Hague 
with a roving commission to hunt and acquire new 
treasures ? I can't. And that is why, when I am 
asked who I would choose to be were I not myself, 
I do not say the King, or Mr. Pierpont Morgan, but 
Herr Bredius of the Mauritshuis. 

And yet if I had Mr. Pierpont Morgan's wealth, 
I would . . . But let us consider first the Hfe and 
works of Jan Vermeer of Delft. 

Jan Vermeer, or Van der Meer, was born in Delft 
and baptized there on 31 October, 1632. His 
father was Reymer Janszoon Vermeer, and his 
mother Dingnums Balthasars. In 1653 he married, 
also in Delft, Catherina Bolnes or Bolenes. How 
many children they had I do not know, but .eight 
survived him. It is generally believed that Karel 
Fabritius, himself a pupil of Rembrandt and a 
painter of extraordinary distinction, was Vermeer 's 
instructor; but the period of tuition must have 
been very short, for Fabritius became a member of 
the Delft Guild in 1652, before which he might 
not teach, and he was dead in 1654, killed by a 
powder explosion. A poem on the death of this 
great painter by a Delft writer has a stanza to the 
effect that from the ashes of that Phoenix rises Ver- 
meer. There is very little of the work of Fabritius 
8 



On the Track of Vermeer 

to be seen; but his exquisite "Siskin," a small 
picture of the little musical shy bird, painted with 
the breadth that is commonly kept for auguster 
subjects, hangs next Vermeer's "Head of a Young 
Girl" (my frontispiece) at the Hague, and would 
alone prove Fabritius to have possessed not only 
strength but sweetness. 

Dr. Hofstede de Groot, the author of a magnifi- 
cent monograph on Vermeer and Fabritius, pub- 
lished in 1907 and 1908, conjectures Vermeer to 
have had an Italian master as well as a Dutch, and 
it is easy to believe. I had, indeed, with none of 
Dr. de Groot's knowledge, come to a similar con- 
clusion; and in the huddle of pictures in one of 
the rooms of the Academy at Vienna I even 
found a copy of an Italian picture — a Correggio, I 
think — which Vermeer's hand might easily have 
made, so luminous and liquid is it. That he visited 
Italy is more than unlikely — practically impossible ; 
but to gain that something Italianate which his 
works occasionally discover there was no necessity 
for him to have done so, for Italian painters settled 
in Holland in some numbers. The "Diana and her 
Nymphs" at the Hague, and the "Christ in the 
House of Martha and Mary " (which I have seen 
only in reproduction) in Scotland, have each Italian 
characteristics; but I must add that in Vermeer's 
authorship of these pictures Dr. de Groot does 
not absolutely believe. 

9 



Old Lamps for New 

The facts about Vermeer are singularly few, 
considering the high opinion in which he was held 
by contemporaries. Almost the only intimate 
thing told of him is the story of his unpaid bread 
bill, as recounted by De Monconys, the French 
traveller. De Monconys visited him in 1663 and 
wanted to buy a picture, but none could be found 
in the artist's house. Vermeer's baker consented, 
however, to sell one which was hanging on his wall 
and for which he had allowed 300 florins. After 
Vermeer's death, it is told, the baker's debt of 
3176 florins was liquidated by two pictures. Since 
Vermeer's wife is known to have had rich relations 
and to have come into money from time to time, 
we may guess this gigantic account to have been 
the result rather of bad management than of 
poverty; for of all the painters of the world none 
less suggests necessity than Jan Vermeer of Delft: 
on the contrary, his work carries with it the idea 
of aristocracy and prosperity, certainly a fastidious- 
ness rarely associated with the father of a large 
family's struggle for existence in the seventeenth 
century. Moreover, we are told that his prices, even 
when he was alive, were higher than those of any 
painter save Gerard Dou, and such a guild as that 
of Delft would not be likely to elect a starving 
man as its chief four several times. 

No, if Vermeer owed money to his baker it was 
because he was easy-going, placid, above such 



On the Track of Vermeer 

trifles, as other artists have been before and since: 
indeed, occasionally still are, I am told. You can 
see that Vermeer was placid: the fact shines in 
every picture. He was placid, and he liked others 
to be placid too. His wife was placid, his 
daughters (if, as I conjecture, certain of his models 
were his daughters) were placid, his sitters were 
placid. His one undisputed landscape shows that 
he wanted nature to be placid ; his one street scene 
has the dove brooding upon it. 

Yet when we put in one balance the debt for 
bread and in the other the very slender output of 
this famous artist, to whom a collector could come 
even from distant France with a heavy purse, we 
are face to face with a difficulty; because even 
placid men when they become chiefs of guilds do 
not much care for continual reminders that they 
owe money, and in such a small town as Delft 
Vermeer and his baker would have had some 
difficulty in not often meeting. Moreover what 
of the butcher? And the vintner? The inference 
therefore — especially when it is remembered that 
the baker occasionally agreed to be paid in kind 
and hang we know not which of the masterpieces 
on his wall — the inference therefore is that Ver- 
meer painted, was forced by necessity to paint, 
many pictures in excess of the very small number 
at the present moment identifiable. Of this, more 
later ; but I want to bring out the point here, since 



Old Lamps for New 

it is of the highest importance and might indeed 
completely alter the life of Mr, Pierpont Morgan. 

We may believe Vermeer to have been a home- 
keeping man from several circumstances. One is 
that he was not only born in Delft (in 1632), but 
he married in Delft (in 1653) and died in Delft 
(in 1675) ; another that the years in which he was 
a chief of the Delft Guild, and therefore a resident 
there, were 1662, 1663, 1670 and 1671 ; another 
that his only famous landscape and his only known 
street scene are both Delft subjects; and another 
that of his thirty odd known figure pictures, thirty- 
one are lighted from the left precisely in the same 
way, which leads one to suppose that m^ost of them 
were painted in the same studio. 

When I add that Vermeer died in December, 
1675, at the early age of 43, and that his ex- 
ecutor was Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the inven- 
tor of the microscope (and probably his model for 
several pictures), I have said all that is known 
for certain of his career. 

To me it is not to Andrea del Sarto that the 
title of the "Perfect Painter" belongs, but to Jan 
Vermeer of Delft. Andrea with all his weakness 
was in a way greater than that: he had, one can 
see, finer thoughts, sweeter imaginings, a richer 
nature than a perfect painter needs; the phrase 
perfect painter limits him to the use of his brush, 
and one thinks of him (and not wholly because 
12 



On the Track of Vcrmeer 

Browning was a man of genius) always as a human 
being too. But of \'ermeer we know nothing 
save that he was a materialistic Dutchman who 
applied paint to canvas with a dexterity and charm 
that have never been equalled : in short, with 
perfection. His pictures tell us that he was not 
imaginative and not unhappy; they do not suggest 
any particular richness of personality; there is 
nothing in them or in his life to inspire a poet 
as Andrea and Lippo Lippi inspired Browning and 
Romney Tennyson. Vermeer was not like that. 
But when it comes to perfection in the use of paint, 
when it comes to the perfect painter — why, here 
he is. His contemporary Rembrandt of the Rhine 
is a giant beside him ; but ruggedness was part of 
his strength. His contemporary, Frans Hals of 
Haarlem, could dip his brush in red and transform 
the pigment into pulsating blood with one flirt of 
his wrist, and yet think of his splendid careless- 
nesses elsewhere. His contemporary, Jan Steen of 
Ley den, had a way of kindling with a touch an eye 
so that it danced with vivacity and dances still, 
after all these years; but what a sloven he could 
be in his backgrounds ! His contemporary Peter 
de Hooch could flood canvas with the light of the 
sun, but how weakly drawn are some of his figures ! 
And so one might go on with the other great 
painters — the Italians and the Spanish and the 
English and the French ; naming one after another, 

13 



Old Lamps for New 

all with more to them as personalities than Vermeer, 
all doing work of greater import; and all, even 
Michael Angelo and Leonardo, even Correggio, 
even Raphael, even Andrea, even Chardin, falling 
beneath Vermeer in the mere technical mastery of 
the brush and the palette — no one having with 
such accuracy and happiness adjusted the means 
to the desired end. He aimed low, but at his 
best — in, say, six pictures — he stands as near per- 
fection as is possible. 

It is this joyful mastery that fascinates me and 
made it so natural, when in the autumn of 1907 I 
was casting about for a motive for a holiday, to say, 
"Let us pursue this painter, let us see in twenty- 
one days all the Vermeers that we can." 

The farthest European city containing a Ver- 
meer of which I then knew being Vienna (I after- 
wards found that Budapest has a putative example), 
we went there first ; and there was a certain 
propriety in doing so, for in the Vienna picture 
the artist is supposed to have painted himself, 
and to begin with a concept of him was inter- 
esting and proper. The ''Maler," as it is there 
called, is at Count Czernin's, a comfortable man- 
sion at Number 9 Landes-gericht strasse, open to 
visitors only on Mondays and Thursdays. There 
are four rooms of pictures, and nothing in them 
matters very much save the Vermeer. An elderly 
butler is on duty; he shows you the best place to 

14 



On the Track of Vcrmecr 

stand in, brings a chair, and murmurs such facts 
about the marvellous work as appeal most to his im- 
agination — not so much that it is a miracle of paint- 
ing as that it was acquired for a mere song, and 
that Americans constantly walk into this room with 
blank cheques in their hands and entreat the Count 
to fill them up at his pleasure. But no, the Count 
is too proud of his possession. Well, I admire him 
for it. The picture may not have such radiance 
as the "Pearl Necklace" at Berlin, or such charm 
as the "Woman Reading a Letter" at the Ryks, or 
such sheer beauty as the Mauritshuis "Girl's Head," 
but it is brilliant and satisfying. It does not give 
me such pleasure as certain others, to be named 
later, but it is in some ways perhaps finer. Vermeer 
is seated at his easel with his back to the world — a 
largish man with long hair under a black velvet 
cap, and the careful costume of a man who can pay 
for his bread. Nor does the studio suggest poverty. 
The artist is at work on the head of a demure 
damsel whom he has posed near the window, with 
the light falling upon her, of course from the left. 
The little mousy thing has a wreath of leaves in 
her hair and a large book held to her breast; in 
her right hand is a long musical instrument. On 
the wall is the most fascinating of the many maps 
that the artist painted — with twenty little views 
of Dutch towns in the border. Vermeer was the 
first to see the decorative possibilities that lie in 

15 



Old Lamps for New 

cartography; and he was also, one conjectures, a 
geographer by incHnation. 

The beautiful blue Danube had so Httle water 
in it just then that the voyage to Budapest 
would have taken almost twice as long as it should, 
and there was not time. To make the journey 
by train, just for one day, was an unbearable 
thought at that moment ; although I now regret 
that we did not go. The Budapest Vermeer is 
a portrait, a Dutch Vrouw, standing, looking full at 
the world, without any accessories whatever. Not 
having seen it, I can express no opinion as to its 
authorship, but Dr. de Groot is doubtful, although 
he reproduces the picture in his book among the 
practical certainties. So also does M. Vanzype, the 
most recent of our painter's critics, whose mono- 
graph, "Vermeer de Delft," in the ''Collection des 
Grands Artistes des Pays-Bas," was pubHshed in 
1908. M. Vanzype goes farther, for he also in- 
cludes the portrait of a young man in the Brussels 
gallery for which the curator, M. A. J. Wauters, 
has made out so eloquent a case, but which Herr 
Bredius and Dr. de Groot both repudiate. For 
myself, all I can say of it is that one does not 
jump to the denial of it as one did to the putative 
example in our National Gallery, just completed 
by the addition of its lost half. The Budapest 
Vermeer is in reproduction a beautiful picture — 
a youngish Dutch woman with the inevitable 
16 



On the Track of Vermeer 

placidity, but not so open and easy-going as the 
personalities whom the artist chose for his own 
pictures: she has folded hands and large white 
cape and cuffs. M. Vanzype admits that this 
portrait and that of the young man at Brussels 
lend colour to the theory of Thore and M. 
Arsene Alexandre that Vermeer studied for a 
while immediately under Rembrandt; but he 
goes on to show that this was practically an im- 
possibility. 

Turning reluctantly away from Budapest, we 
went next to Dresden, which has two Vermeers 
and a light and restful hotel, the Bellevue, very 
agreeable to repose in after our caravanserai at 
Vienna. The Bellevue is on the bank of the river 
and close to the Picture Gallery, into which one 
could therefore drop again and again at off hours. 
The famous Raphael is of course Dresden's lode- 
star, and next come the Correggios, and there is a 
triptych by Jan Van Eyck and a man in armour 
by Van Dyck; but it is Vermeer of whom we are 
talking, and the range of Vermeer cannot be under- 
stood at all unless one sees him in the capital of 
Saxony. For it is here that his "Young Courte- 
san" (chastely softened by the modest Baedeker 
into "The Young Connoisseur") is found. It is a 
large picture, for him, nearly five feet by four, and 
it represents a buxom, wanton girl, of a ripe beauty, 
dressed in a lace cap and hood and a bright yellow 
c 17 



Old Lamps for New 

bodice, considering the value of the douceur which a 
roystering Dutchman is offering her. Behind is an 
old woman curious as to the result, and beside her 
is another roysterer, whose face might easily be that 
unseen one of the artist in the Czernin picture, and 
who is wearing a similar cap and slashed sleeves. 
The party stands on a balcony, over the railing of 
which has been flung one of the heavy tapestries on 
which our painter loved to spend his genius. The 
picture is remarkable as being a new thing in Ver- 
meer's career, and indeed a new thing in Dutch art ; 
and it also shows that had Vermeer liked he might 
have done more with drama, for the faces of 
the two women are expressive and true; although 
such was his incorrigible fastidiousness, his pref- 
erence for the distinguished and radiant to the 
exclusion of all else, that he cannot make them 
either ugly or objectionable. The procuress is a 
Vermeer among procuresses, the courtesan a Ver- 
meer among courtesans. The fascination of the 
canvas, though totally different from that of any 
other of his works, is equal in its way to any: it 
has a large easy power, as well as being a beautiful 
and daring adventure in colour. 

The other Dresden picture is also a little ofif 
Vermeer's usual path. The subject is familiar: 
the Dutch woman reading a letter by a table, on 
which is the customary cloth and a dish of apples ; 
the light comes through the same window and falls 
i8 



On the Track of Vcrmccr 

on the same while wall ; but the tone of the work 
is distinct, sombre green prevailing. It would be 
thrilling to own this picture, but I do not rank it 
for allurement or satisfaction with several of the 
others. It comes with me not even fifth or sixth. 
Vermeer's best indeed is so wonderful — the ''View 
of Delft," the ''Girl's Head" at the Mauritshuis, 
the "Milkmaid" and "Woman Reading a Letter" 
at the Ryks, the "Pearl Necklace" at BerUn, the 
"Street in Delft" at the Six Gallery, and the 
"Young Courtesan" at Dresden — that anything be- 
low that standard — such is the fastidiousness which 
this man's fastidiousness engenders — quickly dis- 
appoints; although the student working up to the 
best and reaching the best last would be continu- 
ally enraptured. 

Next Berhn. After the "Girl's Head" at the 
Mauritshuis, which among the figures comes always 
first with me, and the "View of Delft," it is, I 
think, the Berlin "Necklace" that is Vermeer's 
most charming work. I consider the white wall 
in this painting beautiful beyond the power of 
words to express. It is so wonderful that if one 
were to cut out a few square inches of this wall 
alone and frame it one would have a joy for ever. 
Franz Hals' planes of black have never been 
equalled, but Vermeer's planes of white seem to 
me quite as unapproachable. The whole picture 
has radiance and light and delicacy : painters 

19 



Old Lamps for New 

gasp before it. It has more too: it is steeped in 
a kind of white magic as the "View of Delft" is 
steeped in the very radiance of the evening sun. 
BerUn is to me a rude and materiaUstic city with 
officials who have made inattention a fine art, and 
food that sends one to the "Continental Bradshaw" 
for trains to Paris ; but this picture is leaven enough. 
It lifts Berlin above serious criticism. I hope that 
when we have fought Germany in the inevitable 
war of which the papers are so consistently full, it 
will be part of the indemnity. 

The other Vermeer in the superb gallery over 
which Dr. Bode presides with such dangerous en- 
thusiasm (dangerous, I mean, to other nations), is 
not so remarkable ; but it is burnt into my memory. 
That white Delft jug I shall never forget. The 
woman drinking, with her face seen through the 
glass as Terburg would have done it (one likes to see 
painters exceUing now and again at each other's 
mannerisms).; the rich figure of the Dutch gentle- 
man watching her; the room with its chequered 
floor: all these I can visualize with an effort; but 
the white Delft jug requires no effort: the retina 
never loses it. Vermeer, true ever to his native 
town and home, painted this jug several times. 
Not so often as Metsu, but with a greater touch. 
You find it notably again in the King's example at 
Windsor Castle. 

Berlin has also a private Vermeer which I did 
20 



On the Track of Vermeer 

not see — Mr. James Simon's "Mistress and Ser- 
vant." Judging by the photogravure, this must 
be magnificent ; and it is peculiar in respect of 
being almost the only picture in which the painter 
has a plain table-cloth in place of the usual 
heavily-patterned tapestry. The lady in ermine 
and pearls is evidently ordering dinner; the placid, 
pleasant maid has a hint of Maes. The whole 
effect seems to be rich and warm. Two other 
pictures I also ought to have seen before leaving 
Germany — one at Brunswick and one at Frank- 
fort. In the Brunswick painting a coquettish girl 
takes a glass of wine from a courteous Dutch 
gentleman at the table, while a sulky Dutch gentle- 
man glooms in the background. On the table is 
another of the white Delft jugs. The Frankfort 
picture is "The Geographer at the Window," dated 
1668, which in the reproduction strikes one as a 
most beautiful and dignified work, wholly satis- 
fying. The geographer — probably Antony van 
Leeuwenhoek — leans at his lighted table over a 
chart, with his compasses in his hand. All the 
painter's favourite accessories are here — the heavy 
tapestry on the table, the window with its small 
panes, the streaming light of day, the white wall, 
the chair with its brass-headed nails. And the 
kind thoughtful face of the geographer makes 
the whole thing human and humane. Vermeer, 
I fancy, was never more harmonious than here. 
21 



Old Lamps for New 

I shall certainly go to Frankfort soon to translate 
this impression into fact. 

At Amsterdam we went first to the grave and 
noiseless mansion of the Six family at Number 511 
Heerengracht, one of the most beautiful and re- 
served of the canals of this city. A ring at the 
bell brought a rosy and spotless maid to the door, 
and she left us for a Httle while in a lobby from 
which Vermeer might have chosen his pictures' blue 
tiles, until a butler led us upstairs to the little 
gallery. I am writing of 1907, before the negotia- 
tions for the purchase by the State of Vermeer's 
''Milkmaid" were completed, and we therefore 
saw it in its natural home, where it had been for 
two hundred and more years. But now, at a cost 
of 500,000 florins at twelve to the pound (or at 
nearly £155 a square inch) it has passed to the 
Ryks. The price sounds beyond reason ; but it is 
not. Granted that a kind and portly Dutchwoman 
at work in her kitchen is a subject for a painter, 
here it is done with such mastery, sympathy, and 
beauty as not only to hold one spellbound but to 
be beyond appraisement. No sum is too much for 
the possession of this unique work — unique not 
only in Vermeer's career (so far as we know), but 
in all painting. What the artist would have asked 
for it we do not know. At the sale of his works 
in 1696 it brought 175 florins. 

Vermeer here is at his most vigorous and power- 
22 



On the Track of Vermeer 

fill. His other works are notable above every- 
thing for charm: such a picture as the "Pearl 
Necklace" at Berlin represents the ecstasy of 
perfection in paint ; but here we find strength 
too. I never saw a woman more firmly set upon 
canvas : I never saw a bodice that was so surely 
filled with a broad and beating bosom. Only a 
very great man could so paint that quiet capable 
face. Some large pictures are very Httle, and some 
small pictures are large. This "Milkmaid" by 
Vermeer is only eighteen inches by fifteen, but it is 
to all intents and purposes a full length : on no Hfe- 
size canvas could a more real and living woman be 
painted. When you are at Amsterdam you can- 
not give this picture too much attention; be sure 
to notice also the painting of the hood and the 
drawing of the still Hfe, especially the jug and the 
bowl. It was this picture, one feels, that shone 
before the dear Chardin, all his Hfe, as a star. 

The other Six Vermeer is that Delft fagade 
which artists adore. The charm of it is not to be 
communicated by words, or at any rate by words 
of mine. It is as though Peter de Hooch had 
known sorrow, and, emerging triumphant and 
serene, had begun to paint again. And yet that 
is, of course, not all; for De Hooch, with all his 
radiant tenderness, had not this man's native 
aristocracy of mind, nor could any suffering have 
given it to him. Like the "View of Delft," like 

23 



Old Lamps for New 

the "Young Courtesan," this picture stands alone 
not only in Vermeer's record, but in the art of 
all time. Many grow the flower now — there is 
a modern Dutch painter, Breitner, whose whole 
career is an attempt to reproduce the spirit of this 
fagade — but the originator still stands alone and 
apart, as indeed, by God's sense of justice, origin- 
ators are usually permitted to. The sale of twenty- 
one of Vermeer's pictures at Amsterdam in 1696 
included the "Street in Delft" which the Six 
family own, and also a view of houses, a smaller 
work, which fetched forty-eight florins. (That is 
one of the Vermeers which have disappeared, Mr. 
Pierpont Morgan, sir.) 

The Vermeers at the Ryks were, in 1907, two 
in number (now made three by the "Milkmaid"); 
and of these one I do not like, however much I 
am astounded by its dexterity, and one I could 
never tire of. The picture that I do not like, 
"The Love Letter," shows, with the "New 
Testament Allegory" at the Hague, the painter 
in his most dashing mood of virtuosity. Neither 
has charm, but both have a masterful dexterity 
that not only leaves one bewildered but kills all the 
other genre painters in the vicinity. Both were 
painted, I conjecture, to order, to please some 
foolish purchaser who frequented the studio. But 
the other Ryks picture — "The Woman Reading a 
Letter" — here is the essential Vermeer again in 
24 



On the Track of Vermeer 

all his delicacy and quietude. It was the first of 
his best pictures that I ever saw, and I fell under 
his spell instantly. What I have said of the 
''Milkmaid" applies also to the ''Reader"; she 
becomes after a while a full length. The picture 
is only twenty inches by sixteen, but the woman 
also takes her place in the memory as life-size. It 
is one of the simplest of all the pictures: com- 
parable with the "Pearl Necklace," but a httle 
simpler still. The woman's face has been injured, 
but it does not matter; you don't notice it after a 
moment ; her intent expression remains ; her gentle 
contours are unharmed. The jacket she wears is 
the most beautiful blue in Holland; the map is a 
yellowish brown ; the wall is white. The woman, 
whose condition is obviously interesting, is, I like 
to think, the Vrouw Vermeer, possibly the mother 
of the young girls in the pictures at the Hague, 
Vienna and Brussels. 

The Hague is the most comfortable city that I 
know in which to see pictures. It is so light and 
open, the Oude Doelen is so pleasant a hotel, and 
the pictures to see are so few — just a handful of 
old masterpieces at the Mauritshuis and just a 
handful of the romantics at the Mesdag Museum. 
That is all; no formal galleries, no headaches. 
Above all there are here the two most beautiful 
Vermeers that are known — the "Young Girl" — 
and the "View of Delft." Writing in another 

25 



Old Lamps for New 

place some years ago I ventured to call the 
Mauritshuis picture of a girl's head one of the 
most beautiful things in Holland. I retract that 
statement now, and instead say quite calmly that 
it is the most beautiful thing in Holland. And to 
me it is in many ways not only the most beautiful 
thing in Holland, but the most satisf3dng and ex- 
quisite product of brush and colour that I have 
anywhere seen. The painting of the lower lip is 
as much a miracle to me as the flower of the 
cow-parsley or the wing of a Small Heath. I 
said that the "Pearl Necklace" was steeped in 
white magic. There is magic here too. You are 
in the presence of the unaccountable. Paint — 
a recognized medium — has exceeded its power. 
The line of the right cheek is surely the sweetest 
line ever traced. I don't expect you to come a 
stranger to this face and feel what I feel; but I 
ask you to look at it quietly and steadily for a 
little while, in its uncoloured photographic pre- 
sentment, until it smiles back at you again — as 
surely it will. Yes, even in the photogravure 
reproduction that stands as frontispiece to this 
book lurk the ghosts of these smiles. 

Who was this child, one wonders. One of the 
painter's, I think. One of the eight, whom it 
amused him to dress in this Oriental garb that he 
might play with the cool harmonies of yellow, green 
and blue, and the youthful Dutch complexion. If 
26 



On the Track of Vermeer 

this is so, it is one of his latest pictures, for all his 
many children were under age when he died. It 
is probable that the child in the Duke of Aren- 
bcrg's picture at Brussels, in the same costume, was 
a sister. There is certainly a family likeness be- 
tween the two, and if, as one may reasonably 
suppose, Vermeer's wife was his model for certain 
of the other pictures, we may easily believe that 
both were her daughters, for they have her can- 
did forehead, her placidity. 

Think of what h^s been happening in the world 
during the years since this sweet face was set upon 
canvas — the evolutions and tragedies, the lives 
lived and ended, the whole passionate fretted 
progress of the nations! "Monna Lisa" has smiled 
a century and more longer, and she has been looked 
upon every day for centuries : this child, not a whit 
less wonderful as a conquest of man over pigment, 
smiled unseen ; for when she was bought at a Hague 
auction a few years ago by Herr Des Tombes for 
two florins thirty cents she was covered with grime. 
Think of it — two florins thirty cents — and if she 
found her way to Christie's to-day I don't suppose 
that £50,000 would buy her. I know that I person- 
ally would willingly live in a garret if she were on 
its wall. But leaving aside the human interest of 
the picture, did you ever see, even in a reproduc- 
tion, such ease as there is in this painting, such 
concealment of effort ? It was no small thing at 
27 



Old Lamps for New 

that day for a Dutchman to lay his colours like this, 
so broadly and lucidly. It is as though the paints 
evoked life rather than counterfeited it; as though 
the child was waiting there behind the canvas to 
emerge at the touch of the brushwand. 

And the "View of Delft" — what is one to say 
of that? Here again perfection is the only word. 
And more than perfection, for perfection is cold. 
This picture is warm. Its serenity is absolute; 
its charm is complete. You stand before it satis- 
fied — except for that heightened emotion, that 
choking feeling and smarting eyes, which perfec- 
tion compels. The picture is still the last word 
in the painting of a town. Not ail the efforts of 
artists since have improved upon it ; not one has 
done anything so beautiful. It is indeed because 
he painted these two pictures that I have for Jan 
Vermeer of Delft such a feeling of gratitude and 
enthusiasm. Wonderful as are many of his other 
pictures that I have described, they would not 
alone have subjected me to so much travelling in 
continental trains by day and night. But to see 
this head of a young girl and this view of Delft I 
would go anywhere. 

To the "New Testament Allegory" I have 
referred above : it does not give me pleasure 
except in its tapestry curtain. That detail is, I 
suppose, among the wonders of painting. The 
other Mauritshuis Vermeer is the "Diana and Her 
28 



On the Track of Vermcer 

Nymphs" — that gentle Italianate group of fair 
women, the painting of which Andrea himself 
might have overlooked. It is at once Vermeer 
and not Vermeer, It is very rich, very satisfying; 
but I for one should feel no sense of bereavement 
if another name were put to it. As a matter of 
fact Nicholas Maes was long held to have been its 
author. A fifth Vermeer the Mauritshuis chanced 
to possess when I was there, for Herr Bredius had 
recently discovered in a Brussels collection a very 
curious example from the magic hand — a tiny 
picture of a girl with a flute, in a Chinese hat (or 
something very like it), with an elaborate back- 
ground : not a very attractive work, but Vermeer 
through and through, and so modern and innovat- 
ing that were it hung in a Paris or London exhibi- 
tion to-day it would look out of place only by 
reason of its power. The picture is seven and a 
half inches by six and three quarters, and now 
belongs to Mr. Pierpont Morgan. 

After Delft, where we roamed awhile to recon- 
struct Vermeer's environment, but where, I regret 
to say, little is known of him, Brussels. For Ver- 
meer there, one must, as in Vienna, visit the home 
of a nobleman — the Duke of Arenberg — and here 
again one falls into the hands of a discreet and 
hospitable butler. The d' Arenberg mansion is in 
the Rue de la Regence, just under the crest of the 
fashionable hill. It is open to the picture lover, 
29 



Old Lamps for New 

like that of Count Czernin, only on certain days. 
The gallery is small and chiefly Dutch, with a few 
good pictures in it. The Vermeer is isolated on 
an easel — the most unmistakable perhaps of all, al- 
though so cruelly treated by time, for it is a mass of 
cracks. Yet through these wounds the beautiful 
living light of a young girl's face shines — not the 
girl we have seen at the Hague, but one very Hke 
her — her sister, as I conjecture — dressed in the 
same Eastern trappings, a girl with a strangely 
blank forehead and eyes widely divided, akin to 
the type of Madonna dear to Andrea del Sarto. 
The same girl I think sat for the "Player of the 
Clavichord" in our National Gallery, to which we 
soon come. She is a little sad, and a Httle strange, 
this child, and only a master could have created 
her. At Brussels also is one of Vermeer's "Geog- 
raphers," in the collection of the Vicomte du 
Bus de Gisegnies; but this I did not then know. 
And in the Picture Gallery is the conjectural 
portrait of the young man of which I have written 
above. 

After Brussels, Paris — a good exchange. Paris 
has one Vermeer in a private collection — Alphonse 
de Rothschild's — an astronomer, which I have not 
seen, and one in the Louvre — the beautiful 
"Dentelliere" — before which I have stood scores 
of times. This too is very small, only a few 
inches square, but the serene busy head is painted 

30 



On the Track of Vermeer 

as largely as if it were in a fresco. The lighting is 
from the right instead of the left — a very rare ex- 
periment with Vermeer. 

It is greatly to be regretted that our National 
Vermeers are not better, because to many readers 
of this essay they must necessarily be the only 
pictures from his hand that they can study at all 
times ; and my ecstasies will appear to be foolish. 
The lady standing at a spinet is a marvel of 
technique ; the paint is applied with all Vermeer's 
charm of touch ; the room is filled with the light 
of day ; there are marvellous details, such as the 
brass-headed nails of the chair, and the little spot 
of colour on the head is fascinating; moreover 
there is an agreeably ingenious scheme of blue, 
beginning with the gay sky of the landscape on 
the wall, passing through the delicate tippet of the 
lady and ending on a soberer note with the cover- 
ing of the chair. But it is not a picture of which 
I am fond ; it is a tour de force; and I think I posi- 
tively hate the ugly Cupid on the wall, which 
would be a blot on any man's work, most of all on 
Vermeer's. One feels that he must have painted 
this to please the husband of the sitter, who in- 
sisted on his pictures being immortalized. Ver- 
meer, left to himself, would have painted a map. 
The other — the seated girl at the piano — lacks 
the painter's highest radiance. It is the same girl 
that we saw in the Brussels picture. 

31 



Old Lamps for New 

Of the other London Vermeers two (only two !) 
belong to Mr. Otto Beit. One of these is a tiny 
"Lady seated at a Spinet," not in the first rank 
of fascination, but a little masterpiece neverthe- 
less, and the other, "A Lady Writing a Letter," 
notable for the strong and beautiful painting of 
the lady's face, foreshortened as she bends over 
her task. Beside her stands her blue-aproned 
maid, waiting to take the missive to the door. 
The table has its usual tapestry and the wall its 
picture, this time an old master. But the head of 
the lady is what one remembers — with her white 
cap and her pearl drops and her happy prosperous 
countenance. 

Mr. Beit's Vermeers are in Belgrave Square: 
there is another in Hyde Park Gardens, the pro- 
perty of Mrs. Joseph: "The Soldier and the 
Laughing Girl" it is called. The girl sits at the 
table with a bright and merry face; the soldier, 
who has borrowed his red from Peter de Hooch, 
is in the shade; on the wall is a splendid rugged 
map of Holland and West Friesland. The picture 
is paintier than is usual with Vermeer, but very 
powerful and rich. Mrs. Joseph (I am told) has 
been forced by the importunities of collectors 
and dealers to have recourse to a printed refusal 
to sell this work ! 

The Vermeer belonging to the King hangs in 
the private apartments at Windsor, but when I 

32 



On the Track of Vermeer 

saw it, it was, by the courtesy of His Majesty's 
Surveyor of Works of Art, carried into a less 
sacred room of that vast and imposing fortress for 
us to look upon. The Court was absent, and 
workmen were here and there, but one could have 
told that this was the abode of a monarch, even 
had one been blindfolded. There was a hush ! 
On a walk of some miles (as it seemed) through 
dusky passages in which now and then one saw 
dimly one's face in a slip of a mirror at the corners, 
we passed other creatures who had some of the 
outward semblance of human beings; but we were 
not deceived. They were marked also by a dis- 
cretion, an authority, beyond ordinary mortality; 
not the rose, of course, but so near it that one 
flushed. To have this new experience, for I had 
never entered a royal castle before, and be on a 
visit to a Vermeer, was a double privilege. The 
Vermeer is very charming, but not one of the first 
rank ; and its coating of varnish does not improve it. 
But it is from the perfect hand none the less, and 
there is the white Delft jug in it for the eye to re- 
turn to, Hke a haven, after every voyage over the 
canvas. 

England also has Vermeer's "Christ in the House 
of Martha and Mary," which, when it was exhibited 
in Bond Street some few years ago, divided the 
experts, but is now, although not confidently, given 
to our painter by Dr. de Groot. This picture, 

» 33 



Old Lamps for New 

which I have not seen, has in the reproduction 
much of the large easy confidence of the "Diana 
and her Nymphs" at the Hague. It hangs now in 
Skelmorhe Castle, and some day I hope to blow a 
blast outside those Scottish walls and succeed in get- 
ting the drawbridge lowered that I may look upon it. 
There are nine examples in America to-day 
(191 1). Of these Dr. de Groot reproduces only 
six, for the other three have come to light since 
he published. The six which he gives are — Mr. B. 
Altman's "Woman Asleep" (from the Rodolph 
Kann Collection), Mr. James G. Johnson's "Lady 
with the Mandoline," Mrs. Jack Gardner's "Three 
Musicians," Mr. H. C. Frick's "Singing Lesson," 
Mr. Pierpont Morgan's "Lady with Flute," and 
"The Woman with the Water Jug," in the Metro- 
politan Museum in New York. Of these I have 
seen only Mr. Morgan's, described above. The 
three new ones are Mr. Morgan's "Lady Writing," 
Mrs. Huntington's "Lady with Lute," and Mr. 
Widener's "Lady Weighing Pearls" (or gold), 
which was exhibited in London early in 191 1, and 
which brings Dr. de Groot's list to thirty-seven. 
This new Vermeer is not absolutely his best; 
it is not so great and simple and strong as 
"The Milkmaid," at the Ryks ; it is not so radiant 
as "The Pearl Necklace," at the Kaiser Friedrich 
Museum in Berlin; it is not so exquisite and 
miraculous a counterfeit of Hfe as the "Girl's 

34 



On the Track of Vermeer 

Head," at the Mauritshuis; nor so enchanting and 
epoch-making as the "View of Delft," in the same 
gallery. Those I take to be the artist's four finest 
pictures. But it is well in his first dozen, and 
it is vastly better than either of those in the Na- 
tional Gallery. 

The new picture represents a woman : one of 
those placid domestic creatures to whom Vermeer's 
brush lent a radiance only a gleam of which many 
a Madonna of the Southern masters would have 
envied. How little can they have thought, these 
Delft housewives and maidens, that they were 
destined for such an immortality ! She stands 
beside a table, as most of Vermeer's women do, and 
she has a jacket of dark-blue velvet trimmed with 
fur, and a white handkerchief over her head. The 
tablecloth also is blue ; the curtain is orange. 
Standing there, she poises in her right hand a 
pair of goldsmith's scales. On the table is a pro- 
fusion of pearls (painted with less miraculous dex- 
terity than usual), and a tapestry rug has been 
tossed there too. Behind her placid, comely head, 
on the wall (where Vermeer usually places a map), a 
picture of the Last Judgment hangs, which may or 
may not be identifiable. (I should doubt if Ver- 
meer introduced it with any" ironical intention ; 
that was not his way.) This picture is on a Hght 
grey wall. The light comes, of course, from the 
left, and never did this master of light paint it 

35 



Old Lamps for New 

— or educe it — more wonderfully. It triumphs 
through the window and curtain exactly as in 
"The Pearl Necklace," past the same black mirror. 
The woman's face, however, has the greatest 
lustre ; from it is diffused a lambency of such 
beauty that one might almost say that the rest of 
the picture matters nothing; such a soft and 
lovely glow were enough. The work is not signed, 
except with the signature of immanent personality. 

Since the discovery of this picture — No. 36 — yet 
another has been found — a large group of children 
representing Diana and her nymphs — which Mr. 
Paterson of Old Bond Street — the discoverer of 
"Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" — has 
in his possession. Mr. Paterson is a true Vermeer 
enthusiast, and not one of those with whom the 
wish is the father to the thought. His new 
Vermeer is obviously an early work and is on a 
larger scale than any of the others: it has weak- 
nesses of drawing and in more than one respect 
suggests an experimental stage ; but one cannot 
doubt its authorship, and everywhere it is interest- 
ing, and here and there exquisite, especially in the 
figure of the child in the left-hand corner. With 
this picture the list of practically unquestionable 
Vermeers reaches thirty-eight. 

There remain the one or two on the border-line 
of authenticity at which I have glanced, and also 
a signed landscape in the possession of Mr. 
36 



On the Track of Vermeer 

Newton Robinson. This, if genuine (as I do not 
doubt), is Vermeer's only woodland scene, with 
the exception of those on the walls of other 
of his pictures, such as that in the National 
Gallery, for example. It is a soft brown land- 
scape, as little like Vermeer as possible in 
the mass. But in the detail — particularly in one 
detail — the signature is corroborated. In the 
foreground is a little arbour with some young 
people in it holding a musical party. The most 
prominent figure is a girl crowned with flowers: 
and this girl is sheer Vermeer in attitude, in 
charm, and in technique. The work is, I should 
guess, juvenile and experimental, but it has many 
attractions and is of the deepest interest as the 
thirty-ninth opus on the side of certainty. 

Vermeer's practically unquestionable output thus 
totals thirty-nine pictures. Think of the small- 
ness of the harvest. Thirty-nine ! That is to 
say, hardly more for Vermeer's whole career than 
the Boningtons to be seen in a single London 
collection — that at Hertford House — where there 
are thirty-five of his works. And Bonington died 
at the age of twenty-seven. How many pictures 
by Bonington exist I know not, but hundreds, I 
suppose, in all. And Vermeer has only thirty- 
nine to his name, and lived nearly twice as long, 
and had eight children to support. 

The question that confronts us, the question to 

37 



Old Lamps for New 

which all these remarks of mine have been lead- 
ing, then, is. Where are the others? Because there 
must have been others; indeed we know of a few, 
as I will presently show ; but there must have been 
many others, since Vermeer began to paint when 
he was young, and painted till the end, and had a 
working period of, say, twenty-four years — be- 
tween 1652, when he was twenty, and 1676, when 
he died. At the modest rate of only four pictures 
a year this would give him a total of ninety-six 
pictures, or nearly sixty more than we know of. 
But putting his output at a lower rate — say at two 
pictures a year — that would leave us with several 
still to discover. Of the existence at one time of 
two if not more of these we have absolute know- 
ledge, gained from the catalogue of the Vermeer 
sale in Amsterdam in 1696, which I copy from 
M. Vanzype's pages, together with the prices that 
they made and his commentary : — 

"i. A young girl weighing gold in a little 
casket. 155 florins. 

"2. A milkwoman. 175 fls. 

"3. The portrait of the painter, in a room. 45 fls. 

"4. A young woman playing the guitar. 70 fls. 

"5. A nobleman in his room. 95 fls. 

"6. A young woman at the harpsichord, and a 
young gentleman listening. 30 fls. 

"7. A young woman taking a letter from a ser- 
vant. 70 fls. 

38 



On the Track of Vermeer 

"8. A drunken servant, sleeping at a table, 
62 fls. 

"9. A gay company in a room. 73 jEls. 

"10. A man and a young woman making music. 
81 fls. 

''11. A soldier with a young girl who is laugh- 
ing. 44 fls. 

"12. A young lace-maker. 28 fls. 

"13. View of Delft. 200 fls. 

"14. House at Delft. 72 fls. 

"15. View of several houses. 48 fls. 

"16. Young woman writing. 63 fls. 

''17. Young woman adorning herself. 30 fls. 

" 18. Young woman at the harpsichord. 42 fls. 

" 19. A portrait in ancient costume. 36 fls. 

"20. and 21. Two pendants. 34 fls." 

On the above catalogue M. Vanzype comments 
as follows : — 

"The greater number of these pictures seem to 
have been recovered. 

"The Milkwoman [No. 2] is, in all probabihty, 
the one hanging for so long in the Six coflection. 

"The Young woman playing the guitar [No. 4] is 
actually the picture belonging to Mr. Johnson, in 
Philadelphia. It has been in the Cremer collec- 
tion at Brussels and in the H. Bischoffsheim 
collection in London. 

"The Young woman at a harpsicJiord with a 
gentleman listening [No. 6] is no doubt the much- 

39 



Old Lamps for New 

admired picture at Windsor Castle, where it is one 
of the treasures and is called The Mtisic Lesson. 
It was sold at Amsterdam at the Roos sale, in 
1820, for 340 florins. 

"The Young woman taking a letter from a ser- 
vant [No. 7] is at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, 
under the title The Letter. It was bought by the 
State, through the intervention of the Rembrandt 
Society and of M. Van Lennep, from M. Messcher 
Van Vollenhoven for 45,000 florins. 

"The Drunken servant sleeping at a table [No. 8] 
is, in all probability, the picture which until just 
lately belonged to the Kahn collection in Paris, 
and of the authenticity of which there is no doubt. 
[This was bought by Mr. Altman in 1910.] Burger 
possessed another picture, a servant sleeping in a 
kitchen, and he believed that this was the work 
sold in 1696. In his picture the figure is not lean- 
ing on the table. It is now in the Widener col- 
lection and in it the characteristic qualities of 
Vermeer are not to be found. 

'M man and a young woman making music [No. 10] 
is probably the Singing Lesson of the Frick collec- 
tion at Pittsburg. 

"yl soldier with a young girl who is laughing 
[No. 11] is Mrs. Joseph's picture in London. 

^^The young lace-maker [No. 12] is the Httle chef- 
d'ceuvre in the Louvre sold for 84 francs at the 
Muilman sale in 1813 ; 501 in 1817 at the 
40 



On the Track of Vermeer 

Lapeyriere sale ; 265 fls. at the Nagel sale in 
185 1, and in 1870 bought by M. Blockhuyzen, of 
Rotterdam, for 1270 frs. 

"The View of Delft [No. 13], if it has no replica, 
is the picture in the Museum at the Hague, for 
which 2900 fls. was paid at the Stinstra sale in 
1822. 

"The House at Delft [No. 14] is the Ruelle of the 
Six collection. 

"The Young woman writing [No. 16] is without 
doubt the picture in the Beit collection in London. 
This was in the Heris sale at Brussels in 1857. 

"The Young woman adorning herself [No. 17] 
is The Pearl Necklace in the Berlin Museum. 

"The Young woman at the harpsichord [No. 18] 
is either the picture in the National Gallery or 
that in the Beit collection, or perhaps that in the 
Salting collection [now also at the National 
Gallery]. 

"It is believed that the portrait in ancient 
costume [No. 19] is the portrait of the young girl 
in the Museum at the Hague [my frontispiece]. 

"[Nos. 20 and 21.] Finally, since at the Hendrik 
Borgh sale in 1720 one Astrologer and its pendant 
were sold for 160 fls. ; and since two Astrologers 
and a pendant were sold at the Neyman sale in 
1797 for 270 and 132 fls., it may be deduced that 
the pendants of the 1696 sale are either the two 
Geographers which belong at the present day to 

41 



Old Lamps for New 

the Museum at Frankfort and to M, Du Bus de * 
Gisegnies at Brussels ; or one only of these and f ' 
M. Alphonse de Rothschild's Astronomer. ^^ 

To these remarks of M. Vanzype may be added 
that No. I is the picture recently exhibited in 
London and now in Mr. Widener's collection, and 
No. 3 is probably the Czernin picture. No. 9 
might be the Brunswick painting. This leaves us 
only with two of the Amsterdam sale pictures to 
discover — No. 5, A nobleman in his room, and No. 
15, View of several houses. But, of course, certain 
others which M. Vanzype and I think we have 
traced may be wholly different. M. Vanzype 
furthermore remarks: ''Other pictures have at 
certain times been heard of and have since dis- 
appeared, notably the ' Devideuse^ discussed in 
1865 by Biirger and an English connoisseur, 
which was then in England, but of which no trace 
has since been found." 

Among the thirty-nine that are known, although 
there are many interiors such as the painter loved, 
there is, remember, only one woodland scene, only 
one pure landscape, only one religious subject, only 
one real portrait, only one street scene, only one 
kitchen scene, only one purely classical subject, 
only one family scene. The isolation of these ex- 
amples fills one with a kind of fury. No painter, 
and especially no painter with such an interest in 
the difficulties of his art, such a painter's painter, so 
42 



On the Track of Vcrmeer 

to speak, as Vcrmeer, and moreover a man with 
eight children and a clamorous baker — no painter 
paints only one landscape, especially when the re- 
sult is so commandingly successful as the "View of 
Delft." Where are the others? (M. Vanzype 
has found a replica, but it is not generally ac- 
cepted.) No painter is satisfied with one attempt 
at a beautiful fagade. Where are the others? 
(.We know there was one other.) No painter paints 
only one classical subject. Where are the others? 
(Mr. Paterson's example is only half-classical: 
classical with a domestic flavour: a family scene in 
masquerade, to be exact.) No painter paints only 
one religious subject. Where are the others? No 
painter paints only one portrait pure and simple as 
distinguished from portrait and genre. M. Vanzype, 
it is true, claims to have found another; but that 
would make only two. How indeed would he be 
allowed to paint no others, when he was Vermeer 
of Delft and lived in an age of Dutch prosperity 
and Dutch interest in art? WTiere are the others? 
Do you see how one feels — how maddening it is 
that these bare forty are all, when one knows 
that there must have been many more? 

Vermeer may, of course, have himself destroyed 
some, as Claude Monet recently destroyed a num- 
ber of his. But I do not thirJi so ; he could not 
have afforded to, and he was not that kind. No: 
they still exist somewhere. And the question 

43 



Old Lamps for New 

where are they brings us back to the wealth 
of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, for which I was wishing 
at the beginning of this essay. With it I would 
furnish expeditions not to discover the Poles north 
and south, because I care nothing for them; not 
to conquer the air, because I love too much to 
feel my feet on this green earth; not to break 
banks or to finance companies; not to kill the 
gentle giraffe for America's museums; but simply 
to hunt among the byways of Northern Europe 
in the hope of coming upon another work by that 
exquisite Delft hand. That is how I would spend 
my money; and incidentally what charming ad- 
ventures one would have, and what subsidiary 
treasure one would gather ! That would be an 
expedition worth making, even if the prime object 
of the search always eluded us. 



44 



The Fool's Paradise ^^^ ^^:> ^^^ ^;^ ^^y 

THERE is an old picture-shop in the West- 
Central district of London, notable for the 
grime of its canvases, in the window of which there 
is to be seen at this moment — unless a confiding 
purchaser has just borne it off — a girl's head and 
bust by some very indifferent Dutch hand, under 
which is printed on the frame the startling and 
courageous legend, "The Coral Necklace. By Jan 
Vermeer, of Delft." 

Of course the ascription is inaccurate. Were it 
accurate and the picture worthy of it, this little 
shop would be the Mecca of the first art experts of 
Europe and America, and the dealer would be in 
the way to affluence ; nor does the picture's present 
owner probably believe in it. But what of some 
previous possessor who did believe in it — some 
simple soul who was genuinely convinced that 
upon his wall hung a portrait by this rarest and 
most exquisite and radiant of Dutch masters? Do 
you not envy him his easy credence, his want of 
fastidious taste? I do. 

A little while ago there was a lawsuit — indeed 
a series of lawsuits — all turning upon the collection 

45 



Old Lamps for New 

of porcelain left by a wealthy Regent Street mer- 
chant, whose hobby was the acquisition of china. 
As a man in the prime of life he had been a good 
judge ; but as he grew older and his brain weakened 
his sense of discrimination left him, and it was 
discovered that his later purchases, so far from be- 
ing the priceless examples of Dresden and other 
ware which they were thought to be, were ail-but 
worthless. This naturally was a grief and disap- 
pointment to the heirs who were to benefit from 
the sale ; but for us to be sorry for him is as foolish 
a waste of sympathy as I know. For though there 
he sat, that old amateur of ceramics, surrounded 
by the mediocre, yet in that he believed it to be 
the choicest he was enviable. That behef is the 
heart of the case, since it is not what things really 
are, but what one thinks things to be, that is the 
important matter. 

Truth has a slightly different expression for 
every one. To this aged connoisseur with his de- 
caying faculties her expression was falseness itself, 
could he have scrutinised it with intelligence, 
but to his dim eyes it looked like the finest 
candour, and therefore it was the finest candour. 
He sunned himself in it, and passing his hands 
lovingly over the spurious shepherdesses was 
happy. The point is that he could not have been 
happier had the porcelain been truly of the rarest 
and most wonderful. 

46 



The Fool's Paradise 

I hope it will never be my fortune to visit a 
picture collector whose walls are hung entirely 
with obvious copies which he believes to be 
original, and flagrant daubs which he thinks 
masterpieces — a collector in short who relies 
only on the posthumous activity of artists; yet if 
it is, I hope I shall know how to control myself 
when he displays his treasures. But of one thing 
I am certain : that no matter how I may suffer from 
the concealment of my true feelings as an art lover, 
I shall experience a genuine affection for my host, 
and a genuine delight in his transparent, credible 
nature. Surely the people who live in fool's 
paradises are the salt of the earth. The man who 
says of a fine thing, "A fine thing and my own," 
I can admire, but not necessarily with warmth; 
the man (he is very common) who says of a fine 
thing, "A poor thing, but my own," I have very 
httle use for; but the man who says of a poor 
thing, "A fine thing and my own," him I admire 
cordially, and could almost embrace. 

But about this Vermeer. I cannot get it out of 
my head, for Vermeer is a painter of whom, as you 
know, I have made some study, and the thought 
of any one really sitting down excitedly with this 
grotesquely misattributed picture in his room, read- 
ing the lying label without a qualm, even with 
pride, scanning the commonplace paint with no 
twinge of dubiety — it is this thought which beats 

47 



Old Lamps for New 

me. The man who confidently had the legend 
printed on the frame must indeed have been a 
simpleton beyond appraisement — the very briniest 
salt of the soil. For consider: the copyists, the 
forgers, may do credible things with Corot, even 
with Raphael. Every day they are writing David 
Cox's signature on old water-colours; false ascrip- 
tions are the life-blood of too many firms. That 
is true. But Vermeer — there is only one Vermeer ! 
and yet some man could know enough about 
Vermeer to wish to have something by him on his 
wall (modest wish — there are not, as I have been 
saying, forty known Vermeer canvases in the world), 
and then be satisfied with this ! If ever I longed 
to meet a freak it is he — not only to examine his 
bumps, but to abase myself before him. For there 
is a true philosopher, a really wise man, if you 
hke. 

Meanwhile I wish some dramatist with an eye 
to quaint character, if there be such a one left, 
would set upon the stage for us a paradisiacal fool 
such as this — a simple kind of enthusiast without 
a shred of critical faculty or a drop of guile, whom 
we might see amiably fondling his geese and deem- 
ing them swans. That would give me, for one, 
great pleasure. Lamb, in his Captain Jackson, 
approached and skirted the type, but Vermeer's 
"Coral Necklace" would not have attracted that 
engaging creature. If Anatole France were a 
48 



The Fool's Paradise 

dramatist and would return to the gentle, smiling 
mood in which he thought out and built up his 
Sylvestre Bonnard, he might give us this collector. 
I can think of no one else; and even he would 
probably be a little too much inclined to whip 
something on his back, such a castigator and ridi- 
culer as he is. 



49 



Consolers of Genius ^^ ^:> ^^^ ^c^ ^:> 

I HAVE just added another famous dog to my 
list. It was a good list before, but it is now 
richer. It included Matthew Arnold's Geist and 
Max and Kaiser, George Meredith's Islet, Cowper's 
Beau, Newton's Diamond, Mrs. Browning's Flush, 
Mr. Lehmann's Rufus, all Dr. John Brown's many 
friends, Scott's deerhounds, Mortimer Collins's St. 
Bernards, Pope's spaniel. I remember only these 
as I write, but of course there are many others. 
And to this company enters now "Pomero." 

Landor's ''Pomero" came to him late in life — 
in the early 'forties — by which time the old man 
— he was then nearing seventy but had twenty 
fairly stormy years left — had settled again in Eng- 
land, his wife and family and most of his sympa- 
thies being far away in Italy. At Bath he then 
lived, making occasional visits to Gore House, and 
varying the composition of exquisite prose and ten- 
der felicitous verse with quarrels and tempests 
and tempests and reconciliations and tempests 
and lawsuits. Such then was the possessor of 
''Pomero" — or, as he would probably have called 
himself, the proud possession of "Pomero" — of 

50 



Consolers of Genius 

whom such ghmpscs as I have had come to me in 
scraps of letters quoted by Forster in his Life of 
this noble, troubled, impossible, glorious creature. 

Here is one, written by Landor at Warwick, 
when away from home, or what stood for home at 
that period — 1844. Pomero had only just arrived 
from Fiesolc ; and it is w^orth remarking that had 
Landor lived to-day no such fortune would ever 
have been his, for never would he have survived 
such explosions of rage as the modern six months' 
quarantine for imported dogs would have brought 
on him. (Think of him expressing his views to the 
custom-house officer at Dover !) "Daily," he wrote, 
"do I think of Bath and Pomero. I fancy him 
lying on the narrow window-sill, and watching the 
good people go to church. He has not yet made 
up his mind between the Anglican and Roman 
Catholic; but I hope he will continue in the faith 
of his forefather^, if it will make him happier." 

Pomero, I should say, was a Pomeranian ; but let 
me quote Sir Sidney Colvin's charming sentences 
upon both man and dog. "With 'Pomero' Landor 
would prattle in English and Italian as affection- 
ately as a mother with a child. Pomero was his 
darling, the wisest and most beautiful of his race ; 
Pomero had the brightest eyes and the most won- 
derful yaller tail ever seen. Sometimes it was 
Landor's humour to quote Pomero in speech and 
writing as a kind of sagacious elder brother whose 

51 



Old Lamps for New 

opinion had to be consulted on all subjects before 
he would deliver his own. This creature accom- 
panied his master wherever he went, barking 'not 
fiercely but familiarly' at friend and stranger, and 
when they came in would either station himself 
upon his master's head to watch the people pass- 
ing in the street, or else lie curled up in his basket 
until Landor, in talk with some visitor, began to 
laugh, and his laugh to grow and grow, when 
Pomero would spring up and leap upon and fume 
about him, barking and screaming for sympathy 
until the whole street resounded. The two to- 
gether, master and dog, were for years to be en- 
countered daily on their walks about Bath and its 
vicinity, and there are many who perfectly well 
remember them; the majestic old man, looking 
not a whit the less impressive for his rusty and 
dusty brown suit, his bulging boots, his rumpled 
linen, or his battered hat ; and his noisy, soft- 
haired, quick-glancing, inseparable companion." 

Landseer, one feels, should have painted them: 
Dignity and Fidelity, Unreason and Understand- 
ing, Lion and Pomeranian. Since he did not, we 
must go to Forster's extracts from the letters to 
fill in the picture. Another passage, also in 
1844: "Pomero was on my knee when your letter 
came. He is now looking out of the window; a 
sad male gossip, as I often tell him. I dare not 
take him with me to London. He would most 
52 



Consolers of Genius 

certainly be stolen, and I would rather lose Ipsley 
or Llanthony. The people of the house love him 
like a child, and declare he is as sensible as a 
Christian. He not only is as sensible, but much 
more Christian than some of those who have lately 
brought strife and contention into the Church," 

Again: "Pomero is sitting in a state of con- 
templation, with his nose before the fire. He 
twinkles his ears and his feathery tail at your 
salutation. He now licks his lips and turns round, 
which means 'Return mine.' The easterly wind 
has an evident effect upon his nerves. Last even- 
ing I took him to hear Luisina de Sodre play and 
sing. She is my friend the Countess de Molande's 
granddaughter and daughter of De Sodre, Minister 
of Brazil to the Pope a few years ago. Pomero was 
deeply affected, and lay close to the pedal on her 
gown, singing in a great variety of tones, not al- 
ways in time. It is unfortunate that he always 
will take a part where there is music, for he sings 
even worse than I do." 

So far the letters have been to Forster. Here is 
a passage from one to Landor's sisters, also in 
1844: "Let me congratulate you on the accident 
that deprives you of your carriage-horses. Next to 
servants, horses are the greatest trouble in life. 
Dogs are blessings, true blessings. Pomero, who 
sends his love, is the comfort of my solitude and 
the delight of my life. He is quite a public 

53 



Old Lamps for New 

character here in Bath. Everybody knows him 
and salutes him. He barks aloud at all familiarly, 
not fiercely. He takes equal liberties with his 
fellow-creatures, if indeed dogs are more his fellow- 
creatures than I am. I think it was St. Francis 
de Sales who called birds and quadrupeds his 
sisters and brothers. Few saints have been so 
good-tempered, and not many so wise." 

For twelve years Pomero lived to make his 
master (his servant) happy or less unhappy, and then 
he died. That is the tragic thing — the brief life of 
these loyal devotees. It is not right, not fair, that 
so much love and energy should so quickly pass 
away. Many sensitive persons refuse for this 
reason to keep dogs at all. That, I think, is going 
too far, but I can understand it. Life at its 
longest for a human being is so brief and so 
fraught with disappointment and disillusion that, at 
least, one feels, the span of the most faithful and 
satisfying friends that man knows might have been 
made commensurate. . . . Pomero, as I have said, 
was Landor's for twelve years, and then he died. 
Writing to Forster on the loth of March, 1856, 
the old man — he was eighty-one — tells the news : 
"Pomero, dear Pomero, died this evening at about 
four o'clock. I have been able to think of nothing 
else. . . ." 

A few days later he wrote again: "Everybody 
in this house grieves for Pomero. The cat lies 

54 



Consolers of Genius 

day and night upon his grave, and I will not dis- 
turb the kind creature, though I want to plant 
some violets upon it, and to have his epitaph 
placed around his little urn : — 

O urna ! nunquam sis tuo eruta hortulo : 
Cor intus est fidele, nam cor est canis. 
Vale, hortule ! aeternumque, Pomero ! vale. 
Sed, si datur, nostri memor." 

Eighty-one though he was, Landor had still nine 
years before him — years of trouble, and fury, and 
exile. Not till 1864 did he meet Pomero again. 

Pomero had been Landor's confidant and de- 
light for five years when, in 1849, there came to 
one of the most illustrious of his contemporaries — 
and a critic of the world not less impatient than 
himself, but how different ! — a similar companion. 
It was not, it is true, a Pomeranian, but a dog 
none the less. 

The news was thus broken by one of the most 
remarkable women of all time to, as it happens, 
the same friend who had been first told of the 
arrival of Pomero. "0 Lord!" she writes, wil- 
fully, characteristically as ever, "O Lord! I forgot 
to tell you I have got a Httle dog, and Mr. C. has 
accepted it with an amiability ! To be sure, when 
he comes down gloomy in the morning, or comes 
in wearied from his walk, the infatuated little 
beast dances round him on his hind legs as I 
ought to do and can't; and he feels flattered and 

55 



Old Lamps for New 

surprised by such unwonted capers to his honour 
and glory." So wrote Jane Welsh Carlyle to 
John Forster, on the nth of December, 1849. 

Sixteen years later the writer of that letter 
died suddenly in her carriage in Hyde Park, and 
thus ended a life of heroic vivacity. Her husband, 
deprived for ever of the power of sustained work, 
difficult enough when he had her service and in- 
telligence within call, spent a few months in his 
early bereavement in collecting and arranging and 
annotating her marvellous correspondence; and 
one does not envy him his feelings as he did it. 
Coming to the note to Forster which I have quoted, 
he thus introduced it: "Poor little Nero, the 
dog, must have come this winter, or 'Fall' (1849)? 
Railway guard (from Dilberoglue, Manchester) 
brought him in one evening late. A little Cuban 
(Maltese? and otherwise mongrel) shock, mostly 
white — a most affectionate, lively little dog, other- 
wise of small merit, and little or no training. 
Much innocent sport there arose out of him; 
much quizzical ingenuous preparation of me for 
admitting of him: 'My dear, it's borne in upon 
my mind that I'm to have a dog,' etc., etc., and 
with such a look and style! We had many walks 
together, he and I, for the next ten years; a great 
deal of small traffic, poor little animal, so loyal, so 
loving, so naive and true with what of dim intel- 
lect he had ! Once, perhaps in his third year 
S6 



Consolers of Genius 

here, he came pattering upstairs to my garret; 
scratched duly, was let in, and brought me (liter- 
ally) the 'gift of a horse' (which I had talked of 
needing) ! Brought me, to wit, a letter hung to 
his neck, inclosing on a saddler's card the picture 
of a horse, and adjoined to it a cheque for £50 — 
full half of some poor legacy which had fallen to 
her ! Can I ever forget such a thing ? I was not 
slave enough to take the money ; and got a horse 
next year, on the common terms — but all Potosi, 
and the diggings new and old, had not in them, 
as I now feel, so rich a gift !" 

These three volumes of Mrs. Carlyle's indomi- 
tably gay correspondence, laughing at her crosses, 
making Hght of her disappointments, extracting 
whatever of merriment or sunshine was possible, 
and never with any trace of self-commendation or 
consciousness of heroism : and a woman too who 
must have known that, given a fair chance, which 
she never had, she would have shone in her own way 
with hardly less brilliancy than her bear ; who must 
have known she was worth petting, and consider- 
ing, and adoring rightly — these three volumes of 
brilliant good-humour against odds, with the dour, 
intolerant, solitary widower re-living the irre- 
coverable past as he read them over and edited 
them, counting his lost opportunities on every 
page, are surely as tragic a work as literature knows. 
But Nero is pawing at the desk. The note con- 

57 



Old Lamps for New 

tinues: "Poor Nero's last good days were with us 
at Aberdour, in 1859. Twice or thrice I flung him 
into the sea there, which he didn't at all like; 
and in consequence of which he even ceased to 
follow me at bathing time, the very strongest 
measure he could take — or pretend to take. For 
two or three mornings accordingly I had seen 
nothing of Nero, but the third or fourth morning, 
on striking out to swim a few yards, I heard 
gradually a kind of swashing behind me; looking 
back, it was Nero out on voluntary humble partner- 
ship — ready to swim with me to Edinburgh, or to 
the world's end, if I liked." 

Pomero, as I said, lived for twelve years with 
his whirlwind adorer. Nero had a shorter life 
with that strange Scotch couple only by a few 
months. This is the end of Carlyle's note: "Fife 
had done his mistress, and still more him, a great 
deal of good. But, alas, in Cook's grounds here, 
within a month or two a butcher's cart (in her very 
sight) ran over him neck and lungs: all winter 
he wheezed and suffered; 'Feb. ist, i860,' he 
died (prussic acid, and the doctor obliged at last!). 
I could not have believed my grief then and since 
would have been the twentieth part of what it 
was — nay, that the want of him would have been 
to me other than a riddance. Our last midnight 
walk together (for he insisted on trying to come), 
Jan. 31st, is still painful to my thought. 'Little 
58 



Consolers of Genius 

dim, white speck, of Life, of Love, Fidelity, and 
Feeling, girdled by the Darkness as of Night 
Eternal ! ' Her tears were passionate and bitter, 
but repressed themselves, as was fit, I think, the 
first day. Top of the garden, by her direction, 
Nero was put under ground. A small stone tablet 
with date she also got, which, broken by careless 
servants, is still there — a httle protected now." 

It is there still, but few visitors to that gloomy 
Chelsea house, where two geniuses, a man and 
woman, failed sufficiently to subdue and blend 
their individualities for so many years, ever walk 
down the garden to see it. Underneath are the 
remains of one who could neither read nor write 
nor frame systems, but who lived the only success- 
ful Hfe of the three. 



59 



An American Hero -^^ <^ ^^^ <:^ -^^^ 

WHO was William Allen Richardson ? I once 
asked. Since the publication of the vol- 
ume of essays in which the problem was so tire- 
somely propounded many letters have reached 
me, each with its own solution. All are different; 
and their differences show how important it was 
that a warrior for truth should come forward and 
fling the question in the world's face. For the 
growth of legend and myth that has been en- 
dangering the fame of this noble deviser of an 
orange-hearted rose was becoming too rampant. 
Let me, therefore, who asked the question, now 
answer it; for I know. By dint of careful pruning 
I have removed the apocryphal, and the truth re- 
mains. William Allen Richardson was — 

But you must permit me first to narrate some of 
the experiences of an essayist who has the temer- 
ity to indulge in interrogation marks. 

The first letter I received — almost immediately 
after the publication of the book — gave so lucid an 
account of William Allen Richardson that I began 
to think I had made too much of the mystery. 
"Do you really want to know about William AUen 
60 



An American Hero 

Richardson?" it began; and then this story was 
told: "WiUiam Allen Richardson and his wife 
loved roses, and the ambition of their lives was to 
raise an orange-coloured rose. At last they suc- 
ceeded, and they called the treasure 'William 
and Ellen Richardson,' a rather cumbersome title, 
but meaning much to these two. Alas, the printer 
would have none of this sentiment — hence 'Wil- 
liam Allen Richardson.' " 

I cannot say that this narrative satisfied me; 
but there was nothing in it to make one violently 
sceptical. WTiy should not William and Ellen have 
lived this idylHc rose-growing life? Why should 
not their names have been thus intertwined for 
ever, even if a little ungallantly? I had seen 
barges on the Thames called "William and Ellen," 
I was sure ; why not roses ? I therefore went 
about saying that I now knew the whole history of 
William Allen Richardson, and the story was not 
doubted. 

But then arrived an anonymous post card with 
the Paddington postmark: "I am of no impor- 
tance and my brother is of no importance, but 
William Allen Richardson was the brother of my 
brother's handy man. (At least he said so.)" 
What of William and Ellen after that? For the 
time, at any rate, the narrative of their fragrant 
union passed from my repertory. 

That post card will give you an idea of the 
6i 



Old Lamps for New 

lightness with which this matter can be approached. 
I do not mean that the communication in itself is 
frivolous, for, though easy in tone, it yet states the 
case briefly and clearly ; the Hghtness that I com- 
plain of is in the attitude of the writer's brother 
towards this tremendous problem. Here he was, 
with his brother's handy man claiming to be the 
own brother of the great William Allen Richardson, 
and yet doing no more (apparently) than treating 
it as a myth — never investigating — never, in short, 
really caring. Now if I had a brother whose handy 

man was But this is boasting, self-approval ; 

and complacent people conscious of their own rec- 
titude rarely get at the truth. 

Other correspondents followed, all strangers to 
me, and each with a pet theory. One had it that 
William Allen Richardson had been gardener to a 
rose-loving duke. Another, that he was a Scotch- 
man who had gone to France, to manage the 
Ducher nursery. Another, that he was the Amer- 
ican editor of a horticultural journal. Then came 
another more circumstantial story, from a lady in 
Yorkshire. "I was taught by a dear old country 
vicar (himself an enthusiastic rose-grower and close 
friend of Dean Hole) that W. A. Richardson was 
one of the Quaker firm of Richardson, who had a 
place near Newry in the north of Ireland." This 
so chimed in with my own Quakerish suspicions, 
as expressed in the original essay, that I was in- 
62 



An American Hero 

clincd to think we might really be at home at 
last ; but meanwhile an American missive was on 
its way from Louisville, Kentucky, and when it 
arrived I saw at once that here was Veritas naked 
and unashamed. 

A certain statesman who had taken much in- 
terest in the matter will be amured to read the 
Louisville communication. "I have often," he 
wrote to me, "wondered, and occasionally asked, 
who W. A. R. was, and have been at times im- 
patient that people should be content to live on 
without knowing. Now I would almost rather not 
know, having been disappointed for so long," He 
went on to say that he suspected W. A. R. to be 
an American. Well, he was right. Sagacious and 
far-seeing as ever, he now has another opportunity 
of pointing to a fulfilled conjecture ; for there is 
no doubt (since I have had corroboration from an- 
other transatlantic source) that the following letter 
is gospel. 

The writer, ]\Ir. W. R. Belknap, roundly states 
himself to be William Allen Richardson's nephew. 
He continues: "William Allen Richardson was 
born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 20, 
1819. When he was but two years old, his father 
moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where he resided 
until his death, in October, 1892. William Allen 
Richardson married Miss Mary Short, daughter of 
Charles Wilkins Short, the botanist, who pursued 

63 



Old Lamps for New 

his favourite studies of botany and horticulture at 
his country place, Hayfield, some five miles south- 
west of Louisville. With this congenial com- 
panionship, Mr. W. A. Richardson established 
himself in an adjoining place, Ivywood, and became 
much interested in the cultivation and propagation 
of roses. He imported a good many, and in this 
way became acquainted by correspondence with 
Madame Ducher (or she may have been called 
Veuve Ducher), at Lyons, France, who was espe- 
cially interested in a rose which he sent her of a pale 
yellow colour, and she wrote Mr. Richardson that 
she had a sport from this rose in her own garden, 
which, if successful in propagation, she would name 
for him ; hence the name which has interested you 
as applying to the beautiful copperish-yellow rose. 
. . . Mr. Richardson lived until 1892 in his country 
home near here, and would have enjoyed, if he 
might have foreseen, the interest which his name- 
sake has aroused. ..." 

And now we know. The secret is out, and the 
rose will smell no less sweet for it, nor climb less 
carelessly, nor refresh the eye less graciously. 
But I adjure America to be more proud of this 
feather in her cap. I do not suggest that William 
Allen Richardson should have a monument, for he 
has one in every right garden more beautiful than 
marble and very likely more enduring than bronze; 



64 



An American Hero 

but his name should be so deeply cut upon the roll 
of honour that no one need ever have to ask my 
question again. 

But what a blow to that foolish romantic anec- 
dote about Ellen ! 



6S 



Mr. Hastings <:n^ <:> ^^r^^ ^v:^ ^s^v ^c^y 

HAD it not been for the trenchant pen of his 
cousin, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first 
Lord Shaftesbury, we should know nothing of 
Mr. Hastings ; but as it happens, a portrait of Mr. 
Hastings being painted, the Earl was amused to 
pit his pen against the brush of the artist and 
append the result to the picture. So that Mr. 
Hastings used to hang on the wall at Wimborne 
St. Giles's, near Cranbourn, in Dorset (one of the 
Shaftesbury seats), doubly limned. Where he is 
to-day I know not ; but the Earl's words remain 
and are accessible. I take them in the form 
which follows from the "Connoisseur" for Thurs- 
day, 14 August, 1755, and I may in passing say that 
in turning over the leaves of this leisurel}^ little 
breakfast- table companion it was not a little 
disquieting to think what good papers they had 
in London one hundred and fifty-six years ago, 
before the days of amalgamation. 

As to the portrait of Mr. Hastings, I have seen 
an engraving of it in one of Hutchins's Dorset- 
shire books, and it is a crude enough thing — a 
little odd old man, with a pointed beard, sharp 
66 



Mr. Hastings 

eyes, and a long staff in his right hand — not so 
much a patriarch's staff as a surveyor's pole. 
Nothing in it to suggest that he loved spaniels, for 
example, or knew the best thing to do with a dis- 
used pulpit. Yet he did. 

Now for the shrewd and cryptic statesman who 
first made the admirable remark (since given to 
others) that "Wise men are of but one religion," 
adding to the lady who inquired what that was, 
''Wise men never tell." He begins thus: "In the 
year 1638 lived IMr. Hastings ; by his quality son, 
brother, and uncle to the Earls of Huntingdon. He 
was . . . low, very strong, and very active; of a 
reddish flaxen hair. His clothes always green cloth, 
and never all worth (when new) five pounds. His 
house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst 
of a large Park well stocked with deer; and near 
the house rabbits to serve his kitchen; many fish- 
ponds; great store of wood and timber; a bowl- 
ing-green in it, long but narrow, full of high ridges, 
it being never levell'd since it was ploughed. They 
used round sand bowls ; and it had a banqueting 
house like a stand, built in a tree." — The mansion 
no longer stands in its entirety. It was pulled down, 
with the exception of two wings, at the beginning 
of the last century. One of these wings, however, 
contains the kitchen, and gives ample evidence 
of the hospitality which, as we shall see, was 
practised there. 

67 



Old Lamps for New 

Mr. Hastings "kept all manner of sport hounds, 
that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger. And 
hawks, long and short winged. He had all sorts 
of nets for fish. He had a walk in the New 
Forest, and the manor of Christ Church. This 
last supplied him with red deer, sea and river fish 
And indeed all his neighbours' grounds and roy- 
alties were free to him, who bestowed all his time 
on these sports, but what he borrowed to caress 
his neighbours' wives and daughters; there being 
not a woman in all his walks, of the degree of a 
yeoman's wife or under, and under the age of forty, 
but it was extremely her fault if he was not 
intimately acquainted with her. This made him 
very popular; always speaking kindly to the 
husband, father, or brother, who was, to boot, 
very welcome to his house whenever he came." 
("Popular" is a good word, so good, in this con- 
nexion, that one has to pause a little to savour it.) 
Thinking of him thus occupied, if ever, you would 
say, an old, whimsical bachelor v/as portrayed, 
he is portrayed here. But you would be wrong, 
for Mr. Hastings was married. It was his wife 
who brought him Woodlands, and she did not die 
till 1638, when he was eighty-seven. They had, 
moreover, a son. Lord Shaftesbury, who was 
something of a cynic, suppressed this detail. It 
amused him to eliminate Mrs. Hastings. 
His lordship goes on to describe the free-and- 
68 



Mr. Hastings 

easy (and, on the face of it, wifeless) character of 
]\lr. Hastings' house. "A house not so neatly- 
kept as to shame him or his dirty shoes: the great 
hall strow'd with marrow bones, full of hawks' 
perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers; the upper 
side of the hall hung with foxskins of this and 
the last year's kilHng; here and there a polecat 
intermixt; game-keepers' and hunters' poles in 
great abundance. The parlour was a large room 
as properly furnished. On a great hearth paved 
with brick lay some terriers, and the choicest 
hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the 
great chairs had litters of young cats in them, 
which were not to be disturbed, he having always 
three or four attending him at dinner, and a 
little white stick of fourteen inches lying by his 
trencher, that he might defend such meat as he 
had no mind to part with to them." (One does 
not feel much room for a Mrs. Hastings here. 
She kept her own quarters, I imagine.) 

I should like to see a picture of old Mr. Hast- 
ings at his meals — with all his animals about him 
and his hand holding his little white stick. Stein- 
len, who designed that fine poster for Nestle's 
milk — the cats clamouring for the Httle girl's 
breakfast — could draw the animals ; but for the 
little old gentleman, with his red hair and green 
clothes and great age, you would want a Dendy 
Sadler or Stacy Marks. 

69 



Old Lamps for New 

The description of the house continues: "The 
windows (which were very large) served for places 
to lay his arrows, cross-bows, stone-bows, and other 
such like accoutrements. The corners of the room 
full of the best-chose hunting and hawking poles. 
An oyster table at the lower end, which was of 
constant use twice a day all the year round, for 
he never failed to eat oysters, before dinner and 
supper, through all seasons; the neighbouring 
town of Poole supply'd him with them. The 
upper part of the room had two small tables and 
a desk, on the one side of which was a Church 
Bible, and on the other the Book of Martyrs. On 
the tables were hawks' hoods, bells, and such 
like; two or three old green hats, with their 
crowns thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, 
which were of a pheasant kind of poultry, he took 
much care of and fed himself. Tables, dice, 
cards, and boxes were not wanting. In the hole 
of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had 
been used." — Mr. Hastings must have been one 
of the earliest of the smokers, since he was born as 
far back as 1551. 

"On one side of this end of the room was the 
door of a closet wherein stood the strong beer and 
the wine, which never came thence but in single 
glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly 
observ'd. For he never exceeded in drink or per- 
mitted it." In another account of Mr. Hastings 
70 



Mr. Hastings 

his iron rule with regard to liquor was suggested 
to have caused much unhappiness to his guests. 
And I must admit that there seems to be some- 
thing wrong in a house where you may not see the 
bottle, much less handle it. But, on the other hand, 
it is such unexpected whims and unreasonableness 
that arc the life-blood of these old originals. Any 
dull creature can be reasonable. 

Now comes a priceless touch: "On the other 
side was the door into an old chapel, not used for 
devotion. The pulpit, as the safest place, was 
never wanting of an cold chine of beef, venison 
pasty, gammon of bacon, or great apple pye, with 
thick crust, extremely baked." "Never wanting" 
is splendid. One longs to know more of the 
service of this house — of the cook who fell in so 
complacently with such a master's needs and ways. 
"Never wanting !" 

Like Bishop Corbet's fairies, Mr. Hastings was 
of the old profession. "His table cost him not 
much, though it was good to eat at. His sports 
supplied all but beef and mutton, except Fridays, 
when he had the best salt fish (as well as other 
fish) he could get; and was the day his neighbours 
of best quality most visited him. He never wanted 
a London pudding, and always sung it in with 
'My part lies therein-a.' " ''He always sung it 
in." Here lies an old custom indeed, dead, I 
suppose, as Mr. Hastings himself and all his 

71 



Old Lamps for New 

spaniels and kittens. Who sings in a pudding to- 
day? And, indeed, what pudding is worth singing 
in? Not the rice which I had yesterday, at any 
rate. 

And so we come to the end: "He was well- 
natured but soon angry. ... He lived to be a 
hundred; never lost his eyesight, but always wrote 
and read without spectacles; and got on horseback 
without help. Until past four score he rode to the 
death of a stag as well as any." He was buried 
in Horton church in 1650 at the age of ninety 
and nine, and England will never know anything 
like him again. Gone are such spacious days and 
ways; gone such idiosyncrasy and humour. Only, 
I imagine, on the bowling-greens are Mr. Hast- 
ings' characteristics to be still observed ; for our old 
devotees of that leisurely contest, that most pacific 
warfare, cannot in their attitudes, gestures and 
expressions differ much from the Squire of Wood- 
lands. Just so did he, three hundred years ago, 
contort and twist his frame, as he watched his 
bowl's career and bent every nerve and fibre to in- 
fluence it to swerve at the last dying moment on 
the jack between his two rivals. These elemental 
anxieties do not change. 



72 



Thoughts on Tan <::> ^:::> ^^y ^:> ^:> 

IN my search for the curious, which I hope that 
nothing will ever satiate, I came recently 
upon this advertisement at the end of a not too 
respectable comic paper : — 

HANDSOME MEN are slightly sun- 
burnt. "Sunbronze" gives this tint. 
Harmless. Detection impossible. Makes 
men really handsome. Society Lady 
writes : — " Sunbronze is wonderful, charming, 
and genuine." is. i^d., etc. 

UTien I read it first I laughed. Then I cut it 
out. Then I began not to laugh; and I am not 
sure now that one ought not to weep. . . . 

We were considering earlier in this volume a 
certain kind of fool's paradise — the paradise which 
surrounds the collector-fool who genuinely believes 
his geese to be swans. That amiable simpleton 
deceived no one ; he was merely soothingly and 
caressingly self-deceived to the top of his bent 
through a heaven-sent want of true taste. Com- 
pared with him the man who deliberately rubs a 
mixture on his face in order to induce his friends 
to believe that he has been much in the sun when 

73 



Old Lamps for New 

he has not is complex indeed — for he is deceiving 
every one else without for an instant deceiving 
himself at all. For that is my reading of that 
advertisement, I do not accept its face value; I 
do not believe that it is bought by men in order 
to render themselves more attractive to the fair. 
My reading is that it is bought by men (and per- 
haps by women too : you observe the testimony of 
the Society Lady ?) in order that it may lend colour 
to their assertion that they have been fashionably 
or expensively holiday-making when they have not. 
But why pretend ? you say. Ah ! you are per- 
haps well-to-do. Nothing keeps you at home; or 
even if it did, it would not cause you shame. But 
can you not believe that there are others ? . . . 

We feel that we are greater than we know 

— as Wordsworth says. That is an exalted mood. 
A commoner experience would perhaps be ex- 
pressed thus : — 

We hope you'll think us greater than we are. 

That aspiration, at any rate, is at the bottom of the 
success of such a lotion as this ; and it is prevalent. 

A full inquiry into this foible of poor human 
nature would need a volume ; nor could I carry it 
out. Something of the minute scientific method 
of Professor Sully would be needed, with a con- 
siderable infusion of Thackeray added, and a leaven 
of pity, too. 

74 



Thoughts on Tan 

Pity indeed. For though sheer brazen impu- 
dence and a determined lady-kiUing may resort 
to this strange bottle, this phial of mockery, yet 
I seem to see it being smuggled into simpler 
homes too. The poor clerk, for example, who is 
forced by sheer poverty to spend his week or fort- 
night in his London home, and by sheer shame 
to spend it almost perdu; reading the paper in 
bed, smoking his pipe in his back yard, helping 
with the children, playing pool at night over his 
glass in the public-house at the corner — how would 
he feel when he returned to work at the end of 
the period and had to confess that he had been 
nowhere? That is the point to consider, for few 
of us are great, and he is very small indeed. 
Amid triumphant stories of Margate and Southend, 
Yarmouth and Southsea, Brighton and even Guern- 
sey, where would he be if he told the truth? No- 
where. And what fun is it not to be anywhere? 
Don't you see ? And so do you blame him if he 
spends is. i^d., and anoints his countenance with 
a Httle of this delusive fluid on the morning of his 
return, and, strong in its testimony, talks vaguely 
but sufficiently of Heme Bay? Do you blame 
him? You must be a devil of a fellow if you 
do. 

In a way he is entirely justified, for there is no 
doubt that he is gaining self-respect by losing it: 
that is to say, he would feel almost too paltry if he 

75 



Old Lamps for New 

had to confess to the real squahd economy of his 

fortnight. And it is not good to feel too paltry. 

But the wish to be thought more fashionable 

than one is, is not confined to the respectable poor 

— the poor, that is, who are forced to make some- 
thing of a show : surely the least enviable class of 
all; the poor, in other words, who have to forego 
all the privileges of being poor. There is another 
class — Major Pendennis was at the head of it — 
who must intrigue a little too, if they are not to 
be too miserable. I remember a little man who 
had a room in Jermyn Street and lived in his 
Club ; it was his habit to disappear for a fort- 
night or so every nth of August, and reappear 
very brown and very vocal of the moors. His colour 
was genuine — no is. i§d. bottle, but the Lord of 
Light himself had conferred it; yet not by beams 
that fell in Yorkshire or Scotland, but on Brighton's 
pier. How, then, did his narrative of triumph in 
the butts carry conviction? What was his par- 
ticular "Sunbronze"? He wore in the ribbon of 
his hat a little row of grouse feathers. 

And that possibly is what one has to remember 

— that "Sunbronze" takes many forms — more 
than I know, or you know, or ever shall know, 
however extensive our knowledge may be at this 
moment. For we all "Sunbronze" a Httle; at 
least if not quite all, nearly all. We nearly all 
hope you'll think us greater than we are. 

76 



On Leaving One's Beat <^ ^c^ ^;:> ^:y 

WHEN I am going for a long railway journey I 
always buy a number of papers associated 
with walks of life as far as possible removed from 
my own. Then the time passes easily. The 
ordinary papers one reads too quickly; the exorbi- 
tant require attention — they open the door to new 
worlds. I do not mean to suggest that one could 
go so far as to find entertainment in the Financial 
Supplement to the "Times" — that is too much; 
but the organs of dog-fancying, yachting, cricket, 
prize-fighting, the poHce, estate agents, Kcensed 
victuallers — these are sufficiently unusual and con- 
centrated to be entertaining if they are really 
studied. Their exclusiveness, their importance, I 
particularly like : the suggestion they throw out 
that in this world all is vanity save their own affairs 
(as indeed it is). Such self-centredness is very 
exhilarating. 

But the best fun of all is to be found in the 
stage and variety-hall papers. Not only are they 
the most amusing, but also the most human, for 
the sock and buskin have a way of forcing the 
heart to the sleeve. Limelight does more than all 

77 



Old Lamps for New 

the sun of the tropics to bring emotion to the 
surface without shame ; and it thus comes about 
that the periodicals of the players are full of 
refreshment to the cabined and reserved. Read- 
ing one of them the other day, I found in the 
advertisement columns (which should never be 
neglected) the following rich feast of opportunity, 
on which I have been ruminating ever since : — 

"The Angel of His Dreams." 

\YANTED, to rehearse April 19th, 
Summer Tour, Autumn if suit- 
able. Dashing Leading Lady ; must have 
power, pathos, intensity, and be capable 
of strong character work. Emotional 
Juvenile Lady, with pathos and intensity 
(look 17 in first Act; state if sing). 
Handsome wardrobe essential in both 
cases. Clever Emotional Child Actress, 
over 14, look 9 ; own speciality. Tall, 
Robust, Aristocratic Heavy Man ; Aris. 
Old Man (Small Double and S.M.). 
Young Char. Juv. Man (Small Double) ; 
Bright Low Comedian (short). 

References, lowest summer terms, and 
photos essential. 

— There is an advertisement if you like ! Did you 
ever hear of so many strange wants? I certainly 
never did ; nor ever did I hear of so many 
vacancies that I could not myself do anything to- 
wards filling. For, as a rule, one feels one could 

78 



On Leaving One's Beat 

make some kind of a show in most capacities — 
one could maintain for a little while the illusion of 
being a gentleman's butler, or even a gardener, a 
sleeping partner, an addresser of envelopes, a 
smart traveller, an election agent, a sub-editor, or 
any of the things that are so frequently advertised 
for, supposing one to have applied for the post 
and have been engaged. But how begin to be a 
''Young Char. Juv. Man (Small Double)"? That 
leaves me utterly at sea. And "S.M.," what is 
that ? 

It was while pondering upon these matters that 
I realized what an excellent thing it would be for 
many of us whose imagination is weak, and whose 
sympathetic understanding is therefore apt to 
break down, if we could now and then completely 
change our beat. Many a hidebound, intolerant, 
self-satisfied Puritan do I know who, forced into 
such a touring company as this, compelled by sheer 
adversity to assume the habit of a "Small Double 
and S.M.," or a "Bright Low Comedian," would 
come out of the ordeal far sweeter and fitter to 
play his part in the human drama, however he may 
have disappointed the promoters of. "The Angel of 
His Dreams." We remain — it is largely the fault 
of the shortness of life and the need of pence — too 
much in our own grooves. We are too ignorant of 
what we can really do. 

That advertisement came from an organ of the 

79 



Old Lamps for New 

legitimate Stage. Obviously. In a less classic 
and more intimate music-hall paper, which I 
bought at the same time, I found the charming 
announcement of the birth of a son to a North of 
England Valentine Vox. After stating the event — 
"The wife of 'Baddow' (ventriloquist) of a son" 
— it went on thus: — "Both doing well. Baddow 
takes this opportunity of thanking the managers 
and agents who so kindly transferred, altered, and 
rearranged dates, so that I played places near and 
was able to stay in Liverpool for this event." 
There is something very engaging in the na'ivete, 
pride and pleasure of that statement. It contains 
so much of the warm-heartedness of the variety- 
stage, where money and sympathy equally come 
easily and go easily. Baddow's suppression of his 
Christian name, or even initial, I like: his satis- 
faction in having reached a position where both 
are negligible, together with the suspicion that he 
is aware that the advertisement would be of less 
value if the star style were tampered with. I like 
also his complacency as a parent of some importance. 
And then there is in it too the new evidence of 
the kindliness of those in power, all working to- 
gether to keep the properly anxious ventriloquist 
near at home; and finally the really adorable 
transition, indicating real emotion, from the some- 
what stilted if imposing third person to the familiar 
first. 

80 



On Leaving One's Beat 

The good, affectionate Baddow ! I hope mother 
and son are still doing well, and that the son will 
grow up to be a comfort to his parents, and as a 
ventriloquist not unworthy of his father (though 
never surpassing him), and a delight to audiences. 



8i 



The Deer-Park ^c> ^::^ ^^ ^r^- -o^ ^::^ 

AFTER too many years I found myself last week 
once again in the first deer-park I ever saw; 
and the change was only in me. The same beauti- 
ful creatures were there, of the dappled variety, 
feeding in little groups, standing motionless as a 
stranger approached, and moving across the open 
or amid the trees of the avenue with the silent, 
timid curiousness of their kind. The sun was 
golden through cracks in the heavy clouds, and the 
deer's soft dapplings shone in its light, while when 
they moved in any number they twinkled, ghttered, 
almost smouldered. 

Now and then an old stag, with antlers so broad 
and branching that they seemed not his at all, but 
a borrowed head-dress assumed almost as if for a 
charade, would pass with dignity and extreme 
deliberation from one group to another; now and 
then a fawn would trot up to its mother on legs 
of such slender delicacy that their serviceableness 
for anything but the most exquisite decoration 
seemed impossible; and twice there were royal 
battles between young stags, whose horns met in 
a terrifying clash and clatter like spears on shields. 
82 



The Dccr-Park 

These contests were interesting not only for the 
attack and counter-attack, but for the conduct of 
the older stags, two of which at once approached 
very slowly, but full of purpose, to act as referees, 
and, if necessary, to interfere. It was precisely 
the same in each engagement, although they were 
half a mile apart. The second was the more excit- 
ing, for once or twice the referee had to break in, 
and once with a furious rush one of the fighters 
charged his opponent clean into the river, down a 
steep bank, and then jumped in after him and con- 
tinued the battle. All this we saw as we sat under 
one of the lime-trees in the beautiful avenue, and I 
remembered, as I sat there, that just such sounds 
as these — the rattling of antlers in concussion — we 
had been accustomed to hear years and years ago 
when we were children and lodged in a cottage by 
the park gates. Certainly I had not heard it since, 
but gradually it grew more and more familiar, rising 
to the surface of consciousness after this so long 
submersion. 

What the life of a park deer is I have no notion, 
nor was there anyone to ask; but since that is 
thirty-five years ago at the least, it is improbable 
that any of these lovely creatures, so rare and 
dainty and fragile as to be almost unreal, are the 
same that used to thrill us at that distant day; 
yet I repeat there was no visible change whatever, 
save in me. Everything else was the same — the 

^3 



Old Lamps for New 

footpaths; the Hme avenue; the oak deer-fence, 
still often in need of repair; the large house, once 
so awe-inspiring and now so ugly; the church by 
the Scotch firs; the red sand of the road; the 
curious house with the bas-relief of a hog on a 
plate of Sussex iron near the church — but most of 
all the deer, just as fairylike, just as thrilling, as 
ever, and moving exactly in their old mysterious 
ways. I was glad I had seen so few deer since, 
and none dappled. I will not see these again for 
some time, just to keep that emotion of surprise 
and delight green and sweet. 

Considering how many deer-parks England has 
■ — though far from enough — it is remarkable that 
the sight of deer should be such an epoch in the 
life of the ordinary person. Yet the very word 
deer-park gives me a quickening of the pulse, and, 
I hope, always will. I came away wondering what 
Jamrach or Cross would want for a pair; but I 
have lost the wish for them. They should be 
kept more extraordinary than that. They must 
remain an event. I am even sorry for villagers 
who live near deer-parks; while having so much, 
they miss so much. 

The other creature from romance that I group 
with the deer as making a red-letter day for a 
child, and indeed for some of us who are older, is 
the peacock. Now and then, but how rarely, there 
would be an excursion to some great mansion. 
84 



The Deer-Park 

The passage from room to room amid gilt furni- 
ture and ancestral portraits was an excitement, no 
doubt ; but the most memorable sight of all was 
the blue breast of the peacock on the terrace-wall, 
caught through one of the diamond panes. Until 
I moved to London and contracted the Kew 
Gardens Sunday habit, I suppose that I had not 
seen ten peacocks in my life, and now again 
I see them ordinarily not once a year; but a little 
while ago I visited a poet who lives in an old 
house in the very heart of the country, and there 
I found many peacocks. They walked proudly and 
affectedly about the garden, they sat on the walls 
and on the roofs of the out-buildings, they screamed 
at each other and spread their tails. The com- 
plete skin of one that had died burned blue in the 
hall. 

I expressed the usual commonplace as to their 
destructiveness of flowers. 

'To me," said the poet, ''they are flowers. 
One cannot have both, so I have peacocks." 

From this, my first and latest deer-park, which 
has but a handful of cottages near it, we walked 
to the market town, a mile and a half away, and 
there I sought in vain for the little toy and sweet 
shop where all those years ago my first bow and 
arrow was bought. I know just where it stood, 
but new and imposing premises occupy its place. 
The bow was given me by one of those bachelor 

85 



Old Lamps for New 

visitors who have it in their power at extraordi- 
narily small cost to glorify the existence of small 
boys and emparadise the world. It is among the 
deeper tragedies that one can never receive one's 
first bow and arrow again. 



86 



The Rarities ^^^ ^^^ ^=;:^ ^^::> ^vb^ -^::v 

IILW^E been staying in the remote country 
with an aristocrat, by which, of course, I 
mean not a man with two motor-cars, or a man 
with illustrious quarterings, but one through whose 
garden runs a trout-stream. I used to think that 
the possession of a cedar alone conferred aristocracy, 
and I still think that in some measure it does; but 
a stream with trout in it. . . . ! Moreover, this 
friend of mine has a cedar too. 

It is odd how late in life one does some of the 
most desirable things. Here am I, who, ever since I 
can remember, have been longing to be idle with a 
book in a chair beside running water; yet not till 
last week did I find the conditions perfect. The 
sun was hot, yet not too hot ; the book did not 
matter, yet was not despicable, and once a peacock 
butterfly settled upon the open page, and this 
justified in an instant the existence of author, 
publisher, paper-maker, printer, binder, and book- 
seller; the air was filled not only with the pretty 
whispering burble of the current, but also with 
the plashing of a fountain in its marble basin and 
the steady descent of water through a sluice; 

87 



Old Lamps for New 

sweet scents came and went with the gentle breeze, 
and one had but to Hft the eyes to see phloxes and 
dahlias in all their rich glory. And once — but that 
is too wonderful an experience to be mentioned 
without more ceremony. 

Just as one man's meat is another man's poison, 
so is one man's commonplace another's phenom- 
enon. To an Englishman, for example, in Dieppe 
it is nothing to read that a swallow-tailed butterfly 
has been seen in England, because on the cliffs be- 
tween Dieppe and Le Puy swallow-tails are as 
prevalent as garden-whites with us. But what a 
thrill for the English schoolboy with his net to see 
one in his native meadows ! Again, it is nothing 
to a gamekeeper to watch a family of foxes at 
play in the early morning; but it would be an un- 
forgettable spectacle to a town dweller. And I 
daresay that there are readers of these lines in 
Norfolk who are as accustomed to the sight of 
kingfishers as I who live far from water am to that 
of rooks; but to me kingfishers have appeared so 
seldom that they are like angels' visits and mark 
the years. I remember one on the Rother, near 
Midhurst, in 1884; another near Abingdon in 
1889; another at Burford Bridge in 1890; and a 
fourth in the valley between Rievaulx and Helms- 
ley in 1894. That is my total — four kingfishers 
in quite a long and not indolent life, which includes 
at least two separate weeks on the Avon devoted 



The Rarities 

to the search for this bird — not the frequented 
Avon either, but the Avon's quieter parts such as 
one finds near the Combertons and about Haring- 
ton Weir. 

At least that was my total until last week. But 
now I must add a fifth, for as I was sitting by this 
little stream, thinking of nothing, quietly rumina- 
tive and happily receptive, suddenly a jewel darted 
through the air, and, burning bright against the 
sombre depths of a yew, disappeared again. Al- 
most before I had realized its presence my fifth 
kingfisher was gone ; but the day was made perfect 
by the flash. 

And had I sat on I might have had even greater 
luck, for a fortnight ago, while my friend was stand- 
ing motionless on his bridge, an otter climbed out 
of the water close by and strolled along the bank, 
bright-eyed and inquisitive. Luck is the only 
word; and, as I once wTote elsewhere, it is a kind 
of luck which goes entirely by favour of the gods. 
I have it not. The only otter I ever saw was at 
the Zoo ; and incidentally I might add that the 
otter is the only animal in the Zoo for which (with 
the exception of the mice) one does not feel sorry. 
He seems so content; and has so much of his 
"native pewter" (so to speak) to revel in; and is 
so continuously and rapturously alive, making the 
best of both worlds — water and land. Whenever I 
look at him — and he is three or four strong just 



Old Lamps for New 

now — I again realize that one of the most satis- 
factory memories I can indulge is that on the single 
occasion on which I joined an otter hunt nothing 
was killed. 

It was seventeen years ago. The pack had come 
all the way to Sussex from Wales, accompanied by 
an indefatigable owner, who illustrated, curiously, 
pathetically, almost tragically, the hold that the 
chase can exert upon an English gentleman. For 
he was a ruin: he was paralyzed below the waist, 
and had the use only of one arm ; but strapped 
securely on a tried and faithful pony, he was able 
to direct and follow the hunt. It was a strange 
sight : the old placid pony tugging at the lush grass, 
while its crippled rider, in the grip of the passion 
of pursuit, yelled like a demon. Hour after hour 
this stricken centaur patrolled the banks and urged 
on his hounds with shouts and cries pouring from 
his twisted lips. Not an otter-haunted stream in 
England but knew him ! I often think of him and 
wonder. 

Dipping the other day in that most agreeable 
of recent autobiographies, The Reminiscences of 
Albert Pell, I opened once again at his story of 
Sir John Lawes' otters, and, re-reading it, I felt 
more than ever relieved that that one otter-hunt 
of my youth ended without bloodshed. "An 
otter," wrote Mr. Pell, who knew most things 
about English woodlands and streams, "is a de- 
90 



The Rarities 

lightfully amusing pet, and extremely inquisitive. 
When indoor he pries into every room, upstairs 
and downstairs, but has, as a famous sportswoman 
says, a bad habit of getting up early in the morn- 
ing, having a bath, if there is one in the room 
handy, then going up a chimney and returning to 
get into bed with his mistress. My friend Sir 
John Lawes, as great a man in sport as in science, 
had a pair of these animals at Rothamsted. They 
retired by day to a small pool in the park. It was 
his custom at one time to drive some miles to the 
railway-station at St. Albans, taking the train there 
for London. On his return he never failed to 
bring back a basket of fresh fish for the otters. 
As the carriage entered the park on the way back 
to the Hall the creatures, unmoved by any other 
traffic, recognized the paces of their master's 
horses, and coming out of their retreat in haste 
across the grass, ran ahead of the carriage, jump- 
ing up like dogs at the horses' noses till they 
reached the Hall, when, the basket being emptied 
before them, they hurried back with their present. 
Sir John took them up with him to his forest in 
Scotland, where the pair enjoyed the forest as 
much as he did, taking themselves off in the even- 
ing on fishing excursions in wild Highland waters, 
to return without fail before daylight. A wretch 
of a gillie killed the female, whereupon the dis- 
consolate mate became irregular in his habits, stay- 

91 



Old Lamps for New 

ing out at first for one night, then for two or three, 
then a week, and finally never came back at all; 
probably lured away by the enchantments of some 
wild jade with whom he set up poaching and 
housekeeping." 

Is not that a charming story? I think the 
picture of the two creatures frisking ahead of the 
horses (like porpoises around the prow of a vessel) 
one of the most joyous it would be possible to con- 
ceive. 

The sight of otters and kingfishers, alert and 
glancing, in their native haunts confers distinction; 
but there is a far more remarkable uniquity even 
than that; and I recently possessed it. What do 
you say to a Sunday morning walk in Sussex and 
coming upon the dead body of a badger lying just 
in the mouth of its burrow? On the strength of 
such an adventure I claim to be for the moment a 
creature enormously apart and loftily pinnacled. 
That we had badgers within half a mile, we knew. 
Mus Penfold often sees traces of them, although 
never has a living one met his sight; and last 
year, I regret to say, a party of stupid men with 
eight dogs were allowed by the farmer to dig out 
two of the young badgers and kill them. I did 
not watch them at their vile work, but I saw their 
dchris afterwards, and counted the bottles. 

How this badger died we shall never know; but 
there he lay, just like a comfortable sleeping bear: 
92 



The Rarities 

in fact curiously like that little Malayan "Gypsy" 
\vhom I found at the Zoo and whom you will find 
elsewhere in this book. His head, black and yel- 
low^ was between his long-clawed paws quite natu- 
rally. But he was dead enough, and his skin is now 
in the house as a bloodless trophy and a proof that 
England is not yet wholly tamed. 



93 



The Owl ^^^ -^^^ ^'^^^ '^^ ^^^ ^'^^ ''^^ 

TO return to the kingfisher and the epoch in 
one's Hfe made by the rare appearance of 
that glancing jewel, although this house is in 
owlish country, and we hear owls from dusk to 
dawn, yet the sight of one is hardly less rare and 
memorable. The effect is, of course, totally 
different. A kingfisher entrances, thrills; one 
sees it and glows. But the owl cuts deeper; one 
feels that one is in the presence of a thing not 
necessarily of evil but of mystery and darkness. 
That is to say, an owl at night. In broad day 
there can be nothing sinister about him, as I hap- 
pen to know as well as any one. 

On this matter I have a true story to tell, which, 
however, I shall quarrel with no one for disbeliev- 
ing. One Sunday morning in the early summer a 
few years ago I was walking in a little pine-wood 
on a Kentish common. Suddenly, at half-past 
eleven, I was conscious that I was not alone, and 
lifting my eyes I saw on a bush close by a young 
owl. He was looking directly at me with such a 
stare in his deep orange orbs as only an owl can 
compass — steady, incurious, implacable. I stopped 

94 



The Owl 

and stared at him, and thought first of the strange- 
ness of the encounter and then of a humorous 
I)ocm by an American pubUsher (Why don't Eng- 
hsh pubhshcrs write humorous poems?) which I 
had learnt at school, beginning ''Who stuffed that 
white owl?" This owl, it is true, was not white, 
but a beautiful arrangement in soft browns; yet 
he remained as motionless as that other, save that 
every now and then a shutter, timed to about 
three seconds exposure, covered his 'wildered 
lenses and retired again into the machinery of his 
head. 

Seeing how young he was, and thinking it better 
that he should be looked after than left to the 
attentions of the Sunday afternoon villagers (who 
can be very deadly), I determined to take him 
home. I therefore opened a handkerchief, ad- 
vanced slowly upon him, and spreading it over 
him carried him tenderly away. He made no re- 
sistance whatever. I was the first human being 
he had seen and might as easily have been friend 
as foe. 

So far the story makes no great call on credulity. 
But the remarkable part is to come. I gave the 
owl to the boys at a neighbouring cottage, who 
had kept one before and understood feeding and 
so on, and it was arranged that when he was a 
little older he should be released. Very well. 
The next Sunday came and on that morning these 

95 



Old Lamps for New 

boys also abstained from church and walked 
through this little pine-wood on the common, and 
at exactly the same time, and in what I take to be 
exactly the same place, they also found a young owl 
and captured it. ("You see this wet, you see this 
dry.") That's a very odd circumstance, isn't it, and 
worthy of a place in any collection of coincidences ? 

Now, if I did not believe truth to be the only 
really interesting thing in the w^orld, I should go 
on to state that when on the third Sunday I went 
to the little pine-wood again I found a third owl; 
but that is not so. Since then, indeed, except of 
course at the Zoo — where they have all kinds, 
although no longer any of those fascinating little 
creatures from some distant land who live in holes 
in the ground — I had never seen another owl near 
enough to observe it with any minuteness until the 
other evening in Sussex. Then, while it was still 
half light, a large barn-owl emerged from a clump 
of trees beside the road and flew before us and over 
us, as we drove along, for two hundred yards, finally 
disappearing among some ricks. It made no sound 
whatever; fish swimming in a clear stream are not 
less audible. Its light underpart gleamed softly 
like a lamp in a fog, and, like that, seemed almost 
to diffuse radiance. 

This silence is very wonderful and soothing. I 
would prescribe the spectacle of the flight of owls 
at twilight for any disordered mind. But he 
96 



The Owl 

would be a bold physician who recommended for 
any weak nerves the angry, screaming owls that 
sweep round this house in the middle of the night, 
especially when the weather is rough. Then they 
are ominous indeed. 

Our owls live in the belfry, and though I have 
stood again and again in the gloaming, watching, 
I have seen them only once. On that occasion 
there had been some disagreement in the fields, 
for two of them came back in full flight together, 
one pursuing and one pursued, uttering terrible 
cries. I saw them black against the sky for a 
moment, disordered and beating, and then they 
disappeared into the masonry as silently and 
effectually as water into sand. No wonder, I 
thought, as I stumbled away among the graves, 
that some rustic minds think them not birds at all, 
but disembodied spirits. 

The difference between these witches of the 
night returning from their quarrel and that soft 
glimmering ghost that had flown down the road 
was wide enough ; but how much wider the gulf 
between those predatory termagants and the poor 
lost soul in the Kentish pine-wood. Even in his 
mild countenance, however, one could easily 
discern the makings of a bogey. To wake up in 
the small hours and find oneself beneath the 
scrutiny of such eyes in such a countenance would 
be enough for many of us. 
H 97 



Old Lamps for New 

What owls really are like, we shall, I suppose, 
never know: whether they are wise as legend 
would have them, or merely look so ; whether they 
are truly sinister or only weird and carnivorous. 
These things we shall probably never know, but 
there is a lady in Hampshire who recently came 
nearer the secret than any one else has done. 
Her letter describing her experience was printed 
in the "Evening Standard" in the summer of 1910. 
The immediate neighbourhood of her house, she 
explained, was once a favourite hunting-ground of 
owls, but latterly they had steadily decreased, 
until to hear one had become something of a rarity. 
This she much regretted. When, therefore, one 
night she was awakened by an owl's cry she 
sprang up and ran to the window in pleasure, 
and while there it amused her to answer it, 
mimicry of owls being a hobby of hers. But 
this time she mimicked better than she knew, 
for instantly out of the blackness came a crowd of 
owls to her window, angry and threatening and 
uttering strange sounds. She had, it seems, 
stumbled on something in the owl tongue of very 
serious import. Isn't that interesting? She may 
have called out some deadly insult. She may 
have hit on a rally, a summons to arms. What- 
ever it was, it made her for the moment almost one 
of this mysterious, uncanny, nocturnal race. Her 
cry, in short, opened the door on a new world. 



The Owl 

vastly more enthralling in interest and strange 
possibilities than aviation or any of our modern 
inventions can make this. But it instantly shut 
again. 



99 



The Unusual Morning ^:^ <:i^ <^ ^;:^ 

ONE is liable day by day to a great many dif- 
ferent kinds of surprises ; but few persons 
can have known two in the same morning quite 
so unusual and diverse. . . . 

I was sitting in my room, writing, when a new 
and mysterious sound caught the ear. It came 
apparently from the heart of the wall, near the 
chimney, and was such a sound as in the dead of 
night would lay an icy hand on the heart. Since 
it was broad day I had courage and stood by the 
fireplace waiting. It grew louder and louder, 
nearer and nearer, and at last culminated in a 
scurry and clatter in the fireplace itself, from which 
there emerged a robust, testy, and exceedingly 
embarrassed starHng. After looking round in dis- 
may, he blundered across the room and settled on 
the highest row of books, where, secure in his 
altitude, he stared at me and collect3d his wits. I, 
too, collected mine and realized that my destiny 
was, as ever, prosaic. For 1 thought instantly of 
an American poet on the one hand, and on the 
other an Enghsh lady, a friend of mine, both of 
whom under similar conditions achieved romance. 



The Unusual Morning 

For when a bird visited Edgar Allan Poe in his 
study it was a raven, dark not alone with the sable 
hue of night but with mystery and fate, and when 
my friend awoke not long since in her room in 
a beautiful Wiltshire manor-house, what did she 
see brooding musically on the frame of an Old 
Master that hung on the opposite wall but a dove 
— emblem of peace and sweetness and everything 
that is fortunate? 

How different my luck ! A starling. ... Of 
all the fowls of the air, would one not close one's 
house to a starling first and foremost? Yet the 
only visitor from that so near yet so strange 
world of birds that ever came to me was this, the 
least poetical, least attractive. 

That was the first surprise. For the under- 
standing of the second, which occurred only an 
hour later, I must explain that this house is on a 
road which, almost immediately the gate is passed, 
ceases gradually to be a road at all, first declining 
to a cart-track, and then dwindling to nothing 
but a footpath or bridle-path up a South Down 
of extreme steepness. This means that when, as 
sometimes happens, a motor-car rushes past, we 
smile in our beards and await with stoicism and 
amusement the groanings and shrieks of agony 
that indicate that a mistake has been made and 
that a reluctant vehicle is being turned by an 
angry chauffeur in a space far too narrow for it. 

lOI 



Old Lamps for New 

On the morning of which I write a car rushed by 
in the usual way, but as it did not at once return 
I assumed that the party were not uninstructed, 
but had come here by intent for a picnic, as has 
once or twice happened — lobsters' claws and other 
alien and sophisticated debris having been found 
on the turf; and so thinking I forgot them. An 
hour later, hearing the engine throb in the ac- 
customed manner, I knew that the picnic was over, 
and again forgot them. 

A moment after, however, I was called out into 
the garden by a series of shouts and whistles, to 
discover that the car had come to a stop for the very 
sufficient reason that it was on fire. A motor-car 
at any time is still — to me — a strange object, but 
to find one in full blaze close to the gate is really 
a shock. You must have seen it to appreciate it. 
There it stood, enveloped in flames, while leaning 
against the wall, with his head cooling at the 
bricks, was its dejected owner. "What a calam- 
ity! What a calamity!" was all that he could 
say, as he surveyed first the burning wheels, and 
then his blackened hands, and then me. "There's 
nothing to be done, nothing," he added. 

But I did not wait; at least it was worth the 
effort of saving, and we brought water in every 
variety of vessel and hurled it over the conflagra- 
tion. Here we were wrong, for by watering 
flaming petrol one simply increases the area of the 

I02 



The Unusual Morning 

fire. Having learnt this, we bent all our strength 
to getting the car a little farther along the road, 
away from the seat of danger, then hurling the 
water over it once more. This done, it was soon 
extinguished, and the owner and driver had an op- 
portunity to explain. 

"Such a thing has never happened to me be- 
fore," he said. "All these years and no accident. 
I had just filled the tank, you see, and started 
her. She backfired. Perhaps I spilt a little. In 
a moment she was in flames. I did my best. 
Nothing of the kind has ever happened to me be- 
fore." 

Meanwhile he had been joined by his friends, 
two cool and collected ladies, who, all unconscious 
of the catastrophe, had been engaged in the 
least incendiary of pastimes — photographing the 
church — and they added their persuasions to our 
invitation to him to come in and consume restora- 
tives. 

Misfortune handled him curiously. No, he said, 
he would not drink, would not eat, did not want 
to wash, hated the idea of resting. And all the 
while, as he was thus affirming and surveying his 
blistered hands, he was approaching nearer to the 
table in the garden on which refreshments had 
been placed. Vowing he would never sit, he sat; 
declining the decanter with increased vehemence, 
he tilted it into his glass; abjuring cake, he con- 
103 



Old Lamps for New 

veyed a piece to his mouth. He then refused 
to drink any more, and was actually reaching 
out for the decanter as he spoke. Finally, he said 
that he had not the least desire to smoke, and 
took a cigarette. This was the last of his apos- 
tasies, for to the blackness of his hands he adhered. 
And all the while, at intervals, he was assuring us 
that, long as he had driven a car, he had never pre- 
viously had an accident in his life. Never! "I 
had just filled the tank, you see, and started her. 
She backfired. Perhaps I spilt a little. In a 
moment she was in flames. I did my best. . . . 
Nothing of the kind ever happened to me be- 
fore. . . ." 

That is the story. They were soon gone; the 
car, a scorched ruin, was pushed into a neighbour- 
ing shed to await the repairers; and nothing re- 
mained of the incident save a black place in the 
road and a waste patch where grass had been. 
Life resumed its routine. 

But why, when he came to give me his card, 
should I discover that he now lived in a house in 
which, as a child, some of my happiest hours were 
spent? No need for that added touch of coinci- 
dence. Why? He might as easily have inhabited 
every other house in the world. Here you have 
the prodigality of chance. 



104 



The Embarrassed Eliminators <:^ <:^ ^^^ 

WE were talking about Lamb. 
Some one suddenly asked: "Supposing 
that by some incredible chance all the Essays ex- 
cept one were to be demolished, which one would 
you keep?" 

This kind of question is always interesting, no 
matter to what author's work or to what picture 
gallery it is apphed. But for the best resulting 
literary talk it must be applied to Shakespeare, 
Dickens or Elia. 

"Why, of course," at once said H., w^hose 
pleasant habit it is to rush in with a final opinion 
on everything at a moment's notice, with no shame 
whatever in changing it immediately afterwards, 
"there's no doubt about it at all — Mrs. Battle. 
Absolutely impossible to give up Mrs. Battle. Or, 
wait a minute, I'd forgotten Bo-Bo, — 'The Disser- 
tation on Roast Pig,' you know. Either Mrs. 
Battle or that." 

The man who had propounded the question 

laughed. "I saw that second string coming," 

he said. "That's what every one wants: one or 

another. But the whole point of the thing is that 

105 



Old Lamps for New 

one essay and one only is to remain: everything 
else goes by the board. Now? Let's leave H. 
to wrestle it out with himself. What do you say, 
James?" 

"It's too difficult," said James. "I was going 
to say 'The Old Actors' until I remembered several 
others. But I'm not sure that that is not my 
choice. It stands alone in literature: it is Lamb 
inimitable. His literary descendants have done 
their best and worst with most of his methods, 
but here, where knowledge of the world, knowledge 
of the stage, love of mankind, gusto, humour, style 
and imaginative understanding unite, the mimics, 
the assiduous apes, are left behind. Miles. Yes, 
I vote for 'The Old Actors.' " 

"But, my dear James," said L., "think a mo- 
ment. Remember James EHa in 'My Relations'; 
remember Cousin Bridget in 'Mackery End.' You 
are prepared deliberately to have these forever 
blotted out of your consciousness? Because, as 
I understand it, that is what the question means: 
utter elimination." 

James groaned. "It's too serious," he said. 
"It's not to be thought of really. It reminds me 
of terrible nights at school when I lay awake trying 
to understand eternity — complete negation — until 
I turned giddy with the immensity of dark noth- 
ingness." 

Our host laughed. "You were very positive 
1 06 



The Embarrassed Eliminators 

just now," he said. "But have you forgotten a 
wistful little trifle called 'Old China?'" 

''Or, more on your own lines," said W., who hates 
actors and acting, "the 'South-Sea House' or the 
'Old Benchers' ? I will grant you the perfection 

— there is no other word — of the full-lengths of 
Dicky Suett and Bannister and Bensley's Malvolio. 
There is nothing like it — you are quite right. Not 
even Hazlitt comes near it. One can see one- 
self with a great effort doing something passably 
Hazlittian in dramatic criticism, if one were put 
to it ; but Lamb, Lamb reconstructs life and dig- 
nifies and enriches it as he does so. That essay 
in my opinion is the justification of footlights, 
grease-paint and all the tawdry business. And yet, " 

— W.'s face glowed with his eloquence, as it always 
does sooner or later every evening — "and yet if 
I were restricted to one Elia essay — dreadful 
thought! — it would not be 'The Old Actors' that 
I should choose, but — I can't help it — ' Captain 
Jackson.' I know there are far more beautiful 
things in Elia; deeper, sweeter, rarer. But the 
Captain and I are such old friends that it comes 
to this, I couldn't now do without him." 

"Of course," cried H. "I had forgotten. You 
remind me of something I simply must keep — the 
Elliston." He snatched the "Essays" from our 
host's hands and read the following passage, while 
we all laughed — a double laughter — overtly with 
107 



Old Lamps for New 

him, and covertly at him, for if there is one man 
living who might be the hero to-day of a similar 
story, it is H. himself, who has a capriciousness, 
an impulsiveness, a forgetfulness, and a grandiosity 
that are Ellistonian or nothing. 

"'Those who knew Elliston,'" he read, "'will 
know the manner in which he pronounced the 
latter sentence of the few words I am about to re- 
cord. One proud day to me he took his roast 
mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had 
superadded a haddock. After a rather plentiful 
partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed 
with the humbler sorts of liquors, I made a sort of 
apology for the humility of the fare, observing that 
for my own part I never ate but of one dish at 
dinner. "I too never eat but one thing at dinner," 
— was his reply — then after a pause — "reckoning 
fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as 
if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the 
annihilation of all the savoury esculents which the 
pleasant and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours 
forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. 
This was greatness, tempered with considerate 
tenderness to the feehngs of his scanty but wel- 
coming entertainer.'" 

"Well," said our host, reclaiming the book, 

"my vote if I had one would be for 'Mackery End 

in Hertfordshire'; and I make the declaration 

quite calmly, knowing that we are all safe to retain 

io8 



The Embarrassed Eliminators 

what we will. James will of course disagree with 
the choice ; but then you see I am a sentimental- 
ist, and when Lamb writes about his sister and his 
childhood I am lost. And 'Mackery End' delights 
me in two ways, for it not only has the wonder- 
ful picture of Bridget Elia in it, but we see Lamb 
also on one of his rapturous walks in his own 
county. I never see a field of wheat without 
recalling his phrase of Hertfordshire as 'that fine 
corn country.'" 

''All very well," said James, "but if you talk 
like this how are you going to let 'Dream Chil- 
dren' go?" 

"Ah, yes," sighed our host, "'Dream Children' 
— of course ! How could I let that go ? No, it's 
too difficult." 

"What about this?" said the grave incisive 
voice of K., who had not yet spoken, and he be- 
gan to read : — 

"'In proportion as the years both lessen, and 
shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and 
would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the 
spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass 
away 'like a weaver's shuttle.' Those metaphors 
solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable 
draught of mortality. I care not to be carried 
with the tide, that smoothly bears human hfe to 
eternity ; and reluct at the inevitable course of 
destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the 
109 



Old Lamps for New 

face of town and country; the unspeakable rural 
solitudes, and the sweet security of streets.' 

"Who is going to foreswear that passage?" K. 
asked sternly, fixing his eyes on us as if we were one 
and all guilty of damnable heresy. • 

We all sighed. 

K. searched the book again, and again began to 
read : — 

*"In sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, 
reader. I love a Fool — as naturally as if I were 
of kith and kin to him. When a child, with 
child-like apprehensions, that dived not below the 
surface of the matter, I read those Parables — not 
guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more 
yearnings towards that simple architect, that built 
his house upon the sand, than I entertained for 
his more cautious neighbor: I grudged at the 
hard censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that 
kept his talent; and — prizing their simplicity 
beyond the more provident, and, to my appre- 
hension, somewhat unfeminine wariness of their 
competitors — I felt a kindliness, that almost 
amounted to a tendre, for those five thoughtless 
virgins.' 

"Who is going to turn his back for ever on that 
passage? No," K. went on, "it won't do. It is 
not possible to name one essay and one only. But 
I have an amendment to propose. Instead of 
being permitted to retain only one essay, why 
no 



The Embarrassed Eliminators 

should we not be allowed a series of passages 
equal in length to the longest essay — say 'The 
Old Actors ' ? Then we should not be quite so 
hopeless. That, for example, would enable one to 
keep the page on Bensley's Malvolio, the descrip- 
tion of Bridget Elia, a portion of the 'Mrs. Battle,' 
Ralph Bigod, a portion of 'Captain Jackson,' the 
passages I have read, and — what I personally 
should insist upon including, earlier almost than 
anything — the Fallacies on rising with the Lark 
and retiring with the Lamb." 

"Well," said the suggester of the original prob- 
lem, "it's a compromise and therefore no fun. 
But you may play with it if you like. The sweep- 
ingness of the first question was of course its merit. 
James is the only one of you with the courage 
really to make a choice." 

"Oh, no," said our host. "I chose one and one 
only instantly — 'Old China.' " 

"Nonsense!" said James; "you chose 'Mack- 
ery End.'" 

"There you are," said K. "That shows." 

"Well, I refuse to be deprived of 'Old China' 
anyway," said our host, "even if I named 'Mackery 
End.' How could one live without 'Old China'? 
Our discussion reminds me," he added, "of a very 
pretty poem — a kind of poem that is no longer 
written. It is by an American who came nearer 
Lamb in humour and 'the tact of humanity' than 
III 



Old Lamps for New 

perhaps any writer — the Autocrat. Let me read 
it to you," 
He reached for a volume and read as follows : — 

Oh for one hour of youthful joy ! 

Give back my twentieth spring ! 
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, 

Than reign, a gray-beard king. 

Off with the spoils of wrinkled age ! 

Away with Learning's crown ! 
Tear out Life's Wisdom-written page, 

And dash its trophies down i 

One moment let my life-blood stream 

From boyhood's fount of flame ! 
Give me one giddy, reeling dream 

Of life all love and fame ! 
***** 
My listening angel heard the prayer, 

And, calmly smiling, said, 
"If I but touch thy silvered hair 

Thy hasty wish hath sped. 

"But is there nothing in thy track, 

To bid thee fondly stay. 
While the swift seasons hurry back 

To find the wished-for day ? " 

"Ah, truest soul of womankind ! 

Without thee what were life ? 
One bliss I cannot leave behind : 

I'll take — my — precious — wife !" 

The angel took a sapphire pen 

And wrote in rainbow dew, 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a husband too! 

112 



The Embarrassed Eliminators 

"And is there nothing yet unsaid, 

Before the change appears ? 
Remember, all their gifts have fled 

With those dissolving years." 

"Why, yes;" for memory would recall 

My fond paternal joys ; 
"I could not bear to leave them all — 

I'll take — my — girl — and — boys." 

The smiling angel dropped his pen, — 

"Why, this will never do; 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a father too ! " 

***** 
And so I laughed, — my laughter woke 

The household with its noise, — 
And wrote my dream, when morning broke, 

To please the grey-haired boys. 

— "We," said our host, as he closed the book and 
laid it aside, "are like that: we would eliminate 
most of Elia and have our Elia too." 

"Yes," said W. "Exactly. We want them all 
and we value them the more as we grow older and 
they grow truer and better. For that is Lamb's 
way. He sat down — often in his employers' time 

— to amuse the readers of a new magazine and earn 
a few of those extra guineas which made it pos- 
sible to write 'Old China,' and behold he was 
shedding radiance on almost every fact of life, no 
matter how spiritually recondite or remote from 
his own practical experience. No one can rise from 
Elia without being deepened and enriched ; and 

1 113 



Old Lamps for New 

no one having read Elia can ever say cither off-hand 
or after a year's thought which one essay he would 
retain to the loss of all the others." 

B. hitherto had been a silent listener. Here 
he spoke, and, as so often, said the final thing. 
''Yes," he said, "it is vain (but good sport) to take 
any one of the essays and argue that it is the best. 
Just as the best thing in a garden is not any par- 
ticular flower but the scent of all the flowers that 
are there, so the best of Lamb is not any single 
essay but the fragrance of them all. It is for this 
that those gentle paths have been trodden by so 
much good company. 

"Yes," he added meditatively. "'The scent of 
Elia's garden ' ! That is the best essay, if you like, 
and 'Charles (and Mary) Lamb' its title." 



114 



A Friend of the Town ^ ^;> -^::> ^^> 

LONDONERS know much, but not all. A 
few secrets are still to be learned only in the 
provinces, and one of them is the true value 
of the bookstall man. In London a bookstall man 
is a machine; you throw pennies at him and in 
return he throws papers at you. Now and then 
he asks you to buy something that you don't want 
or recommends the new sevenpenny; but for the 
most part he treats you as a stranger, if not as a 
foe, and expects for himself treatment no better. 

But in the country . . . 

JNIake your home in a small country town and 
see how long you can manage without becoming 
friendly with the bookstall man. For in the 
country he is a power. There is no longer any 
casual flinging of pennies; there is the weather to 
discuss, and a remark to drop on the headhnes in 
the contents bill. "Another all-night sitting," 
you say, from the security given by eight good 
hours in bed: "ah well, if people like to be Mem- 
bers of Parliament, let them!" Then you both 
laugh. Or, "What's this? — another new Peer? 
Well, it will be your turn soon," you say, and then 

115 



Old Lamps for New 

you both laugh again. But there is something more 
important than persiflage and gossip — there is the 
new novel to choose from the circulating library. 
For in the country the bookstall man is also the 
librarian and adviser; he not only sells papers but 
he controls the reading of the neighbourhood. 
His advice is sound. His instinct dictates wisely. 
"Jacobs's latest," he says, "is splendid. I read 
it on Sunday." Not, of course, that he has any 
need to read a story to know that it is splendid; 
that would be too mechanical. He knows because 
he possesses the sixth sense with which successful 
handlers of books are gifted. "What's new?" he 
replies, "well, here's something good. Take that. 
You can't go wrong." Or, when in a dissuading 
mood (and nowadays librarians have to dissuade 
as much as recommend, poor doomed varmints), 
"That one? Oh! I don't think she would like 
that. That's a Httle bit — well, it's strong, that's 
what it is. I don't recommend that. But here's 
a charming story by the author of "Milk and 
Water ..." And so forth. 

What some simple country people would do 
without their bookstall man I can't imagine. 
Take Peter, for instance. Peter was the friend of 
three old ladies who lived in a southern seaport — a 
sleepy forgotten town with quiet, narrow, Georgian 
streets and vast stretches of mud in its harbour 
which the evening sun turned to gold. These 
ii6 



A Friend of the Town 

three old ladies — sisters and unmarried — lived 
together in a tiny red brick house where their 
several pcrsonaKties dovetailed perfectly, different 
as they were. One was the practical managing 
sister, one was the humorous commentator, and 
one was the kindly dreamer. All were generous 
and philanthropic; indeed their benefactions of 
thought and deed were the principal business of 
their placid lives, while the principal recreation 
was reading. And herein lay the value of Peter, 
the bookstall man, for it was through his library 
that all their books came to them. He too 
divined the character of the books that he 
circulated by the mere process of touch; and he 
was rarely wrong. He knew to a grain exactly 
what was to be found in every book he recom- 
mended or did not recommend to these old ladies. 
In so far as his recommendations went, Peter was 
always right; and probably his dissuasions were 
rightly based too, although that of course we shall 
never know, since his advice was duly taken. 

But it is no light matter, is it, to pick out suit- 
able stories for three old-fashioned old ladies with 
very decided views as to what is fitting and nice, 
and what not, when the books (and here is the 
real difficulty) were to be read aloud? For this 
meant of course that the three personaHties had to 
be taken into consideration. Each book had to 
please, or at any rate not offend, an old lady who 
117 



Old Lamps for New 

was of a practical managing turn, and an old lady 
who was herself a bit of a quiz (as all good 
novelists must be), and an old lady who had 
Utopian dreams. 

Peter, you see, must have been rather remark- 
able. "No," he would say, "I don't think Miss 
Dorcas would like that . . . the gambling passages. 
. . . I'd recommend this if it weren't for Miss 
Kate. But she'd never like the divorce proceed- 
ings. ..." And so on. 

Reading aloud was to these old ladies a kind of 
ritual. They looked forward to it all day, and 
then as each chapter was finished they discussed 
it and approved or disapproved. When it comes 
to analyzing the pleasures of life, the privilege of 
approving and disapproving in conversation must 
be ranked very high, and reading aloud makes it 
so very harmless an amusement, since no tale- 
bearing is involved. This they did, and not only 
during the reading but at meals too, and often 
they would come down to breakfast after a rather 
wakeful night with new theories as to the con- 
duct of hero or heroine. Happy Peter, to set so 
much gentle machinery in motion ! 

Of course, he was not able always to satisfy their 
programme. Sometimes for weeks and weeks 
together no new books (not only fiction, of course: 
memoirs and travels they were very fond of) 
would be published; but when he really struck 
ii8 



A Friend of the Town 

gold how happy they all were. I remember that 
I found them once — it was thirteen years ago — in 
a state of joyful excitement over one of Peter's 
most inspired suggestions — Miss Jewett's "Country 
of the Pointed Firs." Never could three old ladies 
of simple tastes and warm hearts have been more 
delighted with a printed page. I wished Peter 
could have seen them. 

Is he still acting as friend to that little town, I 
wonder. He was so capable that probably he 
has been promoted to a wider sphere. For that 
is what happens to these friends of the small 
town: they are raised to positions of more im- 
portance and better salaries, and the chances are 
that the old personal intimacy goes altogether. 
They may, for example, be elevated to the place of 
manager at, say, London Bridge. Then is all their 
kindliness and thoughtfulness over: they become 
machines: very targets for pennies and half- 
pennies all day long, with no time for the humaner 
intercourse. 

Well, the price of getting on has always been 
heavy; but here it is paid not only by the friend 
but by the small town too. It is hard when nice 
old ladies are also penalized. 



119 



Gypsy -^^^ ^^^^ '*^^ "^^^ <^ ^=^ -"^^^ ''^^ 

IT is a shocking thing, after ringing the bell to 
inquire after a friend, to be told that she is 
dead. 

That recently happened to me. I rang the bell 
and waited on the step. The door was at last 
opened by a man in livery, or at any rate uniform, 
who knew me. I made to enter, remarking 
"How is Delia?" "Delia?" he said. "Delia 
is dead." 

Here was a blow ! I had been thinking of Delia 
all the way to Regent's Park, seeing again in an- 
ticipation her sad and yearning eyes, her pathetic, 
dumb face, her auburn locks, feeling her confiding 
hand in mine. 

"Dead!" I said. 

"Yes," he repHed, "pneumonia. But Annie's 
here if you'd like to see her. And Jerry too." 

"Of course," I said, and followed him to their 
abode ; stopping in the kitchen on the way for some 
grapes and milk. 

Delia was an ourang-outang ; Annie is a 
chimpanzee. Delia was a red woman — "Sweet 
Auburn, loveliest sample of the Plain!" one 

120 



Gypsy 

murmured as one looked at her; Annie is a bru- 
nette. Annie sits all day in her little basement 
home, with Jerry, and now and then receives 
privileged visitors, such as His Majesty, whose 
ha I — just as if it were mine — she seized and 
hurled to the other end of the room, and the 
young Princes and Princesses, and Fellows of 
the Society and their friends. Annie is "that 
mischievous," but Jerry is thoughtful and low- 
pulsed. Annie will snatch whatever you have 
that pleases her and rush to the ceiling with it; 
Jerry sits quite still and looks at you with bright 
eyes filled with ten thousand sorrows. 

Annie has some of Delia's charm ; but oh, how 
much more had Delia ! Annie also spreads her 
arms for an embrace and is curious about clothes; 
but Delia — no, there will never be another Delia. 

It was while wandering at random regretting 
Delia that I came upon Gypsy. 

Now, Gypsy also is not Delia; but Gypsy's com- 
panionableness and merriment and candour go far 
to soften the loss. A Zoo with both Delia and 
Gypsy in it would be almost too fortunate — shall I 
put it like that? I found her in the Small Cats' 
House, that abode of bright eyes and stealthy 
quicknesses, and, surely, she is out of place. For 
her fellow-creatures in the surrounding cages are 
subtle and swift, predatory and untrustworthy, 
while she is the most transparently harmless, 

121 



Old Lamps for New 

blundering, foolish, faithful thing you could con- 
ceive, without a movement that is not clumsy or 
a thought that is not obvious. 

She was eating chocolate when I found her, 
seated firmly on the floor and picking the silver 
paper off with her teeth as skilfully as a child. 
Having finished the chocolate and satisfied herself 
(no rapid business) that there was no more, she 
turned to another visitor for entertainment and 
seized his walking-stick. Whether she recognized 
a compatriot — for it was a Malacca cane, and she is 
a Malayan bear from the same district — or whether 
all walking-sticks present equal attractions, I do 
not know; but she fondled this one with the 
utmost tenderness, shouldered it, hugged it, nursed 
it, bit it, and did her best to poke out her insignifi- 
cant but very capable eyes with it. 

Then she rose to her full but trumpery height 
and flung her arms round my leg. 

Then she turned to her indulgent keeper — 
whose happiness at being entrusted with a straight- 
forward baby-bear after the monotony of complex 
Small Cats is delightful to watch — and they set 
to at a sparring-match with tremendous spirit. 
Gypsy is not an in-fighter (Hke Welsh) nor an 
offensive assaulter (like Johnson) ; her method is 
to deliver two or three open-handed blows (which 
are not allowed in the Ring) and then to escape 
punishment, at any rate on the face or chest, by 



Gypsy 

rolling herself into a ball and squirming and revolv- 
ing on the ground. This exposes her unguarded 
rotundities to attack, it is true, but blows there 
she seems to enjoy, although affecting to avoid ; 
and then rising to her feet she again advances 
to the fray and repeats the performance. She 
is very gentle, and in some mysterious way softens 
her claws when she hits. 

The contest over, Gypsy turned to my "Pail-Mall 
Gazette" and proceeded very deliberately and 
scrupulously to demolish it. Whether a paper writ- 
ten by gentlemen for gentlemen has ever before 
been made a Malayan baby-bear's plaything, I do 
not know; but it is a very satisfying one, and 
kept her busy and happy for ten minutes. And all 
the while as she walked up and down the floor 
among the visitors, tearing the pages into shreds, 
the Small Cats in their cages were following her 
with intense and glittering gaze, while the largest 
of them — a young puma — flung himself once or 
twice in her direction like a lovely grey missile, to 
be brought up sharp against his bars. 

To any one in need of a new pet I can recom- 
mend a Malayan baby-bear. Gypsy stands about 
forty-two inches, and is entirely covered with 
short, strong, yet soft hair, nearer black than 
brown. Her neck is a rich tawny yellow. Her 
mouth is full of teeth which do not bite, and her 
paws have long and very hard horn-like nails 
123 



Old Lamps for New 

which do not scratch. She is more like a magnified 
mole than anything in the world; absurdly so, in 
fact. Her obedience is instant. "Back to your 
cage, Gypsy," says her keeper, and she returns to 
it; "Shut your door, Gypsy," says her keeper, 
and she shuts it. She then climbs to a lofty perch 
and smiles the smile of the virtuous and uncom- 
plaining — a lesson to the restless ocelot and un- 
quiet lynx. 

There are always a few babies at the Zoo for 
those that think to ask for them. After I had 
seen Gypsy I saw a lion of tender years and he 
allowed me to ruffle his head and tickle his cheeks; 
but no such liberties are possible with the infant 
jaguar, which was born in January, 191 1, and is any- 
thing but the harmless pat of butter that it looks. 
And then I held between my finger and thumb 
a six-weeks' old alligator while he squirmed and 
raged and did everything he could to close his 
fret-saw jaws over me. 

But none of these privileges of course made 
up for Delia's death, and nothing can. 



124 



A Sale "^o ^=:^ ^^ ^^:> -^^^ ^^^^ <^ ^^:> 

THE sale of the late Sir John Day's pictures was 
particularly interesting to me, since it happens 
that I have the satisfaction of sharing that good 
judge's predilections. His gods are for the most 
part mine. I, too, would choose for my walls (if I 
had any) Corots and Daubignys, Marises and 
Mauves, Millets and Bosbooms, Rousseaus and De 
W'ints. I, too, prefer the wistful crepuscule to the 
vivid noon. Hence I entered Christie's at a quarter 
to one on 13 May, 1909, and took the place that 
a boy messenger was keeping for me, with feelings 
of peculiar excitement and enthusiasm. 

The seated company at a big sale at Christie's 
is as unchanging as an ordinary congregation. A 
few strangers may be there, looking in for the 
first time, but the rest, the regular attendants, the 
pew-owners, so to speak, know each other, and 
are known to the auctioneer, so that the bids of 
those who engage in the contest are, as at most 
sales where dealers congregate, often imperceptible 
to others, although to him clear as speech. 

We opened modestly. Lot i was a seascape by 
De Bock, and the first bid was five guineas. It 

125 



Old Lamps for New 

little thought, that bid, what a huge total would 
be built upon it. The De Bock reached i6o 
guineas, and then made room for a Bosboom. Bos- 
boom is a modern Dutch painter, now dead (you 
may see his palette in the Museum at the Hague), 
whose ecclesiastical interiors have a grave and 
sombre beauty that I suppose has never been 
equalled. Among collectors he is becoming more 
and more desired. 

After the Bosbooms we came to the Corots, of 
which there were a round dozen, and a little an- 
ticipatory flutter was perceptible in the room. 
There are better Corots in the world than Sir 
John Day possessed ; but this procession of twelve 
of the tender, serene' canvases from the Ville 
d'Avray studio was very wonderful, and one lost 
the bidding in the quietude of the paint. Among 
them were three early works, when the artist liked 
a more rarefied air than later in life. And these 
one has to know in order to realize fully not only 
how superb Corot was, but how bewilderingly bhnd 
were the connoisseurs of that day to let him 
languish as they did. Of course it is easy to re- 
cognize his greatness now, when the very name 
Corot carries magic with it ; it is difficult to put 
one's self back into those times when it meant 
nothing, and to see the pictures with eyes unas- 
sisted by tradition ; and yet I find it hard to believe 
that if one of these early works had come to me 
126 



A Sale 

suddenly out of a clear sky, I should have failed 
to be arrested by it. 

Well, there we sat, packed together like ex- 
cursionists, while the giant picture-dealers of 
Europe fought for these pacific landscapes — these 
sweet lark songs among the light clouds of the 
grey day, to quote Corot's own description of his 
ideal — until the dozen had reached a total of 
nearly £12,000. 

To Corot succeeded his friend Charles Daubigny, 
whose vast and luminous "Harvest Moon" pro- 
duced the instant bid of 1000 guineas, to which, 
after a long interval of silence, it fell. His "Bords 
de rOise," a great wet landscape, with Daubigny's 
stern, sincere beauty drenching it, brought 1800 
guineas. Others followed, and then five rich 
scenes by Diaz, also a citizen of the white village 
of Barbizon, whose home you may see to-day, with 
a tablet on the gate, almost opposite the rambling 
house of Jean Francois Millet. The first of these 
Diazes was an evening picture with cattle coming 
down to drink beneath a stormy sky; not unlike 
the superb moorland scene from the same brush 
which ]Mr. Salting left to the National Gallery. 
It began at fifty guineas and reached 850. (By 
the way, the starting of safe pictures at fifty and a 
hundred guineas would be a pleasant task for a 
reduced gentleman of the Captain Jackson type, 
who, able no longer to collect, wished still to 
127 



Old Lamps for New 

sun himself in the illusion of prosperity and 
connoisseurship. To make in a loud voice a 
bid of loo or 500 guineas, whether one has 
such a sum in the bank or not, must do some- 
thing for the spirit. It cannot leave one quite 
where one was.) 

After Diaz, Jules Dupre, another great and 
sincere painter of landscape, a direct disciple of 
Constable (who was a founder of the Barbizon 
school) and the friend of Corot, Rousseau, and 
their friends. It was Dupre who said beautifully of 
Corot that he might — it was within the bounds of 
possibihty — be replaced as a painter, but never 
as a man. There were five Dupres, upon the first 
of which a sanguine friend of mine, unconscious 
of the growing value of this master, had placed 
the sum of £100, for which I was to try and get it 
for him. It was too little, I had suggested ; but no, 
Dupre was not much considered, he fondly replied. 
His face fell when I told him how the first bid had 
been 200 guineas and the last 520. 

It is one of the charms of Christie's that you 
never can tell. Pictures fetch every day unex- 
pected prices, both high and low. Good pictures 
slip through, taking the room unawares, and bad 
pictures occasionally reach absurd figures, for 
various reasons. This Dupre, however, was fine. 
I once bought at Christie's for two guineas 
two water-colour drawings attributed to Clarkson 
128 



A Sale 

Stanficld, and, behold, on stripping them to be 
framed again, one was revealed, by a minute 
history on its back, to be a David Cox worth many 
times what I gave for it. Let no one despair of 
a bargain, even when all the dealers from the Con- 
tinent and all the dollars from America are pres- 
ent. The dealers' idea, it must be remembered, 
is to sell again, and they buy accordingly. Many 
a good picture does not appeal to the commercial 
eye. At this sale, for instance, five examples of 
the, to me, impressive art of Georges Michel, the 
rich and sombre painter of windmills, a French 
Crome, brought together only a little more than 
loo guineas, while on the second or water-colour 
day, there were many lots that went far too 
cheaply. In a sale where competition is concen- 
trated upon the great works, the humble collector 
has often a chance. 

After the Dupres came the Harpignies', in 
which Sir John Day was peculiarly rich. This 
grand old man, who is still (191 1) hale, at the 
age of 92, has been painting all his life in oil 
and water-colour, and has never put forth a mere- 
tricious or hurried thing. He is the link between 
Barbizon and the present day. Less charming, 
perhaps, than the greatest men of that school, he 
is more of a realist, and trees and foliage have no 
closer or more inspired student. His great lack, 
I suppose, is tenderness ; everything else he has. 
K 129 



Old Lamps for New 

It is good to know that in this fine, sure hand 
the blood still flows ; that this artist, who has 
loved the world of beauty so long, is still able to 
enjoy it; and that he can watch himself becoming 
an Old Master, and the quarry of the collector, 
while he is still living. 

The old age of artists was a theme on which 
Hazlitt wrote one of his best essays, and just now, 
were he to be still among us, he would find new 
subjects for study — for not only is there Harpignies 
at ninety-two in France, but Sir John Tenniel at 
ninety-two in London; while it is only a year 
or so since William Callow died at ninety-six, 
and W. P. Frith at ninety-one. An artist — par- 
ticularly an open-air artist, like Harpignies and 
Callow — has, one would say, every opportunity 
of attaining to a great age. Given a strong con- 
stitution and the absence of such harassments as, 
for example, bowed prematurely the head of Hay- 
don, there is little to put a strain upon his faculties 
or physique. By the conditions of his art he 
cannot work at night. He is a daylight man: he 
lives upon light and air; he is in direct rapport 
with the sun; he watches the skies (and how few 
of us do that !) ; his eye, searching for beauty 
and knowing beauty when it sees it, is constantly 
being rewarded in the best way — and that must 
make for the content that in its turn must make 
for longevity. When the painter's temperament 
130 



A Sale 

has both placidity and simplicity, it must be the 
happiest of all. 

Harpignies' prices at Sir John Day's sale were 
far in advance of anything he had previously made 
at Christies'. The largest picture produced 1800 
guineas, and the eleven 6270 guineas. A week 
later, however, the old man's English record rose 
to 2000 guineas at the Cuthbertson sale. 

So far all the important work had been French, 
but now (the arrangement was alphabetical) came 
in an illustrious Dutchman, another Nestor — 
Joseph Israels, still happily active at the age of 
87. Mr. Preyer, of Amsterdam, who hitherto 
had been silent, began now to be busy. For the 
most important picture, "Bonheur Maternel," 
1080 guineas were paid, and for five others 2470 
guineas — among them ''The Fisher," which fell to 
Mr. Driicker and added yet another to a collec- 
tion of Israels' which has overflowed both into our 
National Gallery and into the City Museum at 
Amsterdam. 

After the "Shepherdess" of Charles Jacque, 
who painted sheep more brilliantly than any hand 
ever before, had been sold for 1680 guineas, we" 
entered upon a longer Dutch interlude, filled by 
the three Marises, Mauve, and Mesdag; and once 
again the room fluttered, for the name of Maris 
grows more powerful every year. There is, in- 
deed, perhaps no recent prolific painter so certain 

131 



Old Lamps for New 

of a great financial future as the late James Maris. 
On every sale his prices rise, both for oil and 
water-colour. His brother Matthew I do not set 
against him in rivalry, because Matthew stands 
apart. He is an exotic, the most fastidiously 
select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. 
Matthew Maris is alone: a reserved, half-mystical 
exile, who has always painted as Httle rather than 
as much as possible, and has never taken his brush 
in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and 
haunting. To him we come soon. 

James Maris was as abundant as Matthew has 
been restrained; and this makes the huge figures 
that his work now comm^ands, and will, I believe, 
increasingly command, the more interesting. Sir 
John Day had fifteen of his oils and thirteen of 
his water-colours, all of which he bought during 
the artist's life (only recently ended) through 
dealers at modest enough sums, averaging for the 
oils something about £80, and for the water- 
colours £40. At the sale the oils averaged 
£1000 and the water-colours £400. The highest 
sum paid for a single oil was 1600 guineas for a 
view of Dordrecht. That was large, but the 
following week, at the Cuthbertson sale, a James 
Maris brought 4000 guineas. 

These prices may sound absurd, but they are 
not. An artist now and then becomes the fashion 
and excites competition beyond his deserts; but 
132 



A Sale 

not so James Maris. James IMaris was a great 
painter of skies, a great painter of river-side towns, 
a great painter of his native land. He saw things 
largely and painted them largely (now and then 
a little in the manner of the most beautiful lands- 
scape in the world — Vermeer's "View of Delft"), 
and these facts are now known. His future, I 
fancy, is as secure as that of Constable and Crome. 
It gave me immense pleasure to see the brave, 
candid painter so popular. 

And then IMatthew Maris, and the first thrill of 
the sale. James's rich and buoyant canvases, one 
by one on the easel, and the competition of the 
bidders, had set pulses agreeably beating; but we 
had not broken into applause. The first applause — 
no small thing at Christie's, where impassivity is 
cultivated not only as a gentlemanly English habit 
but also from motives of comm.ercial self-protec- 
tion — the first applause was won by Lot 77. 

WTiat was Lot 77 ? The quietest little red and 
brown picture you ever saw, 8^ by ii§ inches; "a 
town [in the words of the catalogue] on the 
farther bank of a river; standing well above the 
red roofs of the houses are seen four windmills; 
a bridge crosses the river on the right; a barge 
and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman 
in the foreground." Such is "The Four Mills" 
of Matthew Maris, that strange, exclusive genius, 
most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. 

133 



Old Lamps for New 

Matthew was born in 1835, and is therefore now 
an old man. He lives in lodgings in London, 
far from Holland and its mills and canals and 
sweeping sky : solitary and sad, with a few marvel- 
lous classics to his name, and on the walls of his 
sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he 
will not ask the landlady to remove for fear of 
hurting her feelings. Here he lives, painting 
a little every day, — but they are pictures for no 
one to see, — and writing (I am told) some of the 
best letters of our time. The old age of artists ! 
Hazlitt truly knew what to write about. 

Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since 
he left Paris after the war. He even carried a 
rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic of his 
gentle nature that he refused to load it. When 
he gave up painting for the public I know not. 
But the latest work that I know — that exquisite 
picture entitled "Butterflies" — a httle blue girl 
lying in the grass, which seems to make much 
of both Whistler and Albert Moore insincere and 
even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was exhibited 
in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his 
works, including the adorable "Enfant Couchee" 
and one of the low-toned Montmartre souvenirs. 

Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his 
easel in 1871 and was then sold with diflEiculty for 
100 francs, or four English sovereigns, or twenty 
American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it 

134 



A Sale 

is recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on 
the folly of painting "such unsaleable stuff." Well, 
here it was now, Lot 77, "The Four Mills," thirty- 
eight years older, and beautiful beyond descrip- 
tion, with an appeal to the deeper nature of the 
connoisseur such as I cannot put into words. 
"Why," I asked an artist, as we stood before it on 
the day before the sale, "why is- it so good?" 
"Partly," he said, "because he never wanted to 
show how cleverly he could paint. Everything 
has its true value. It is so simple and so sincere." 
But this, of course, is not all. There is also the 
curious and exquisite alchemy of the painter's 
mind ; and how much of the painter is in this 
particular masterpiece may be gathered from the 
circumstance that (as I happen to know) it does 
not represent any real Dutch town at all but was 
an invention of his own. The Four Mills exist 
only on this canvas and in Matthew Maris's strange 
and beautiful brain. 

Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the 
artist for it — 100 francs. It then passed to Lord 
Powcrscourt, and it was from his collection that 
Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, 
therefore, being sold for the third time. 

"Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentle- 
men ?" 

"A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thou- 
sand guineas for this picture." 

135 



Old Lamps for New 

"Eleven hundred." 

"Twelve." 

"Thirteen." 

"Fourteen." 

"Fifteen." 

"Sixteen." 

"Seventeen." 

"Seventeen fifty." 

"Eighteen." 

"Eighteen fifty." 

"Nineteen." (The red roofs are getting redder, 
the brown mills browner ! The peace of it all !) 

"Two thousand guineas." 

"And one hundred." 

"Two hundred." 

"Three hundred." 

"Four hundred." 

"Five hundred." 

"Six hundred." 

"Seven hundred." 

"Eight hundred." 

"Nine hundred." (How quiet and beautiful, 
and above all price, all struggle, all commercial- 
ism, the picture is !) 

"Three thousand guineas." 

"And one hundred." 

"Two hundred and fifty." (Strange reading for 
old Matthew Maris in his London lodgings to- 
morrow morning !) 

136 



A Sale 

"Three hundred." 

A pause. 

"For three thousand three hundred guineas." 

A longer pause. 

"For three thousand three hundred guineas." 

And the hammer falls and the room vibrates 
with the tapping of sticks and clapping of hands; 
and "The Four Mills" disappears, bound for the 
house of a dealer, who was to sell it, in time, to 
an English connoisseur, whom, upon my soul, I 
envy. He is the right kind of connoisseur, 
too ; no Peer he, or National Gallery Trustee 
enamoured of American dollars, but a simple 
gentleman who has already given pictures to the 
nation and intends (I am told) to give more — 
perhaps this very Dutch masterpiece. 

Lot 78. "Feeding Chickens." This also is by 
Matthew Maris, and was painted in 1872. "A 
Girl in buff dress and blue cap, is feeding 
chickens with some grain which she holds in the 
fold of her white apron ; foliage background." 
Such is the Christie description, and it serves to 
recall the little enchanted scene to mind; but it 
says nothing of the mysterious romantic feeling of 
it, or the richness and delicacy and sweetness of 
it, or even of the fascinating mediaeval city in the 
distance. 

For this Sir John Day gave £300, and at the sale 
it began at a thousand guineas and reached three, 

137 



Old Lamps for New 

falling also to a Scotch purse — and it is now, I 
hear, in Canada. Two hundred and sixty-four 
thousand six hundred saxpences never went bang 
to better purpose. This second picture, by the way, 
was painted from the same model that lends such 
charm to "The Girl at the Well," feeding pigeons, 
in the M'Culloch collection. 

Six William Marises ^ follow, and then we come 
to another Dutch painter whose work is every year 
more and more desired of collectors — Anton 
Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for 
its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what 
Israels has done for its fisher-folk and James Maris 
for its skies. The place that Mauve's sincere and 
modest art has won in the eyes of the best con- 
noisseurs is a refreshing proof that honesty in 
painting is ultimately the best policy, although 
the honest artist may have every opportunity of 
starving before the tide turns his way. 

Sir John Day had eight Mauves in oil and seven 
in water-colour. The first oil, "Troupeau de 
Moutons sous Bois," he bought in 1888, immedi- 
ately after the artist's death. It was a picture of 
which Mauve was very fond ; Sir John Day gave 
£150 for it. At the sale it began at 500 guineas, 
and after fierce competition it was secured by Mr. 
Reinhart, of Chicago, for 2700 guineas. Pictures 

1 William Maris also is coming to his own. On June 30, 
191 1, one of his pastoral scenes brought £3200, at Christie's. 

138 



A Sale 

with sheep in them, it has been said, always find 
buyers ; but when the sheep are painted as these 
arc, not with the brio of Jacque, but so quietly and 
lovingly . . . ! 

Mauve, like all the greatest painters, took what 
he found around him and made it beautiful. He 
was one of the artists of whom the Creator must 
be most proud, in whom He must take most de- 
light, for his whole life was given up to the demon- 
stration of how beautiful everything is — and never 
with the faintest w^hisper of the words, "and how 
skilful am I ! " Never. Anton Mauve stands with 
the greatest in his sincerity, his genius, and his self- 
effacement. American collectors have always appre- 
ciated him, while his village of Laren, in Holland, 
has long been a settlement of American painters. 

Our first thrill was wdth the Matthew Maris; 
the next w^as with J. F. Millet's "Goose Maiden" 
— one of the most lovely pieces of colour that can 
ever have leaned against Christie's historic post. 
The merest trifle in size — 123^ by 9}^ inches — an 
old master — a jewel of paint — from the moment it 
was born. IMillet was no less a great colourist 
than a great draughtsman and a great lover of the 
earth, and here, in this tiny canvas, all his virtues 
meet. Sir John Day paid heavily for it in his 
time, but its new owner paid more heavily still. 
The bidding began at 500 guineas and mounted 
by hundreds to 5000. 

139 



Old Lamps for New 

After the Millet the most beautiful picture was 
a little landscape by Rousseau, the painter who 
left his studio at Barbizon to the villagers as a 
chapel. "River Scene: with a man fishing from 
a punt" was the description; but that omitted 
the wonder of the work — the evening light and 
stillness. It literally hushed the room. This 
picture is now in the National Gallery, for all to 
see. A week later (observe what it is to have the 
Christie habit) I saw another Rousseau with a 
richer but not more beautiful afternoon light in it, 
and some trees painted as only Rousseau could 
paint them, which brought 4600 guineas. (If 
forests can think, if villages have thoughts, what 
must be the reflection of Fontainebleau and 
Barbizon when they receive the news of these 
Christie contests !) 

And so the day finished, some £75,000 having 
changed hands in three hours — a large sum for 
a little paint, A little paint, do I say? That is 
true ; but a new world, too — a world of wistful 
beauty. And that, of course, cannot be appraised : 
it is dear at a five-pound note, if you do not want 
it — if your taste is unlike Sir John Day's ; it is 
cheap at all you have, if you desire it sufficiently. 



140 



A Georgian Town ^;:> ^3- -^^ <:^ ^^:> 

THIS little town may be said to consist of 
three things — a long, narrow, and not very 
straight High Street, an almost equally long and 
equally diverging street parallel with it, and the 
quay. Both the High Street and its parallel 
neighbour might as easily have been straight as 
not ; but it is very much to their advantage to 
curve a httle, for not only are curves more beauti- 
ful, but they remind one of the street's human 
origin, since before there can be a High Street 
there must be a path, and every one knows that 
no one can walk straight for more than a very few 
paces. Blindfold a man and tell him to walk 
across a field, and he will unconsciously bear to 
the left, I believe ; and he will oscillate too. 

Between the High Street and its neighbour there 
could not well be a greater difference; for the 
High Street is all bustle and business, and its 
neighbour is all quietude and residential re- 
pose. But they have this in common, that 
both are Georgian and red. The High Street, 
it is true, has thrown out a few plate-glass shop- 
fronts in keeping with twentieth-century enter- 
141 



Old Lamps for New 

prise, and a few new facades are there too; but 
the character of the street is still Georgian none 
the less. Its residential neighbour has made no 
concessions; it is eighteenth century still. Old 
shipowners and merchants — yes, and maybe old 
smugglers too — who lived there when George III 
was King would yet be quite at home were they 
to revisit it under George V. Hence I like this 
street the better. I like its window-frames, flush 
with the wall, such as builders may no longer give 
us; I like its square dormer windows, its fanhghts 
over the door, its steps, its knockers, its blinds; 
its town-hall, with a flight of steps on each side, 
which, after describing an elegant curve, meet at 
the imposing door on the first floor; and, more 
than anything, I like its almshouses, which are five 
hundred years old. — So much for the little street, 
where Miss Greenaway might have made studies. 

No need for me to say that the houses no longer 
harbour the class of resident for which they were 
intended ; you know that as well as I do. Suc- 
cessful business men have ceased to live in the 
hearts of towns. Either because they genuinely 
want more room and air, or because a visible token 
of success is a pleasant thing to have, they now 
build houses on the outskirts, and the humbler 
folk inhabit the old houses at a reduced rent. The 
town has scores of these villas dotted about just 
outside its walls. From a balloon the centuries 
142 



A Georgian Town 

could be divided accurately — sixteenth, seven- 
teenth, and eighteenth in the centre ; then a fringe 
of early nineteenth, then an outer fringe of later 
nineteenth; and then the latest addition of all, the 
twentieth-century villas, spick-and-span, and sur- 
rounded with greenery. Meanwhile, behind the 
Kate Greenaway shutters in the town's core the 
managers and clerks and shop-assistants and their 
families are happy — and long may they be so ! 

As for the High Street, I can tell you about that 
very quickly. The best house in it, a superb red 
Georgian mansion, is now the office of the Gas 
Company. That gives you the High Street, does 
it not? There are two book and paper shops, and 
both supply "Punch" only to order. That gives 
you the class of town, does it not? There are 
assembly-rooms where an occasional entertainment 
is given, and an electric theatre has just been 
opened. (The assembly-rooms, by the way, have 
a name pretty enough for a heroine in a novel by 
]\Ir. Hardy — Amity Hall.) At night, however, in 
spite of the absence of organized harmony, the High 
Street is full of melody from upper windows and 
tap-rooms, or from the white building at the foot, 
close to the Custom House — famous in history for 
a smugglers' raid which led to the recapture of a 
tremendous haul of run-goods — where the town 
band practises. The little town is rich in small 
inns, as maritime towns always are; and it has also 

143 



Old Lamps for New 

two large ones, with spacious yards, relics of the 
brave days when gentlemen posted, and billiard- 
tables whose cloth is yellow and whose cushions 
have some of the inflexibihty of a sea-wall. 

Such is the High Street of my little town, 
which, while always a scene of animation, rises to 
its greatest social height on Saturday nights, when 
the country people come in to market, and the 
town-people market too, and the youths walk up 
the middle four and five abreast, and the girls 
walk down the middle four and five abreast, and 
jokes are made, and hearts, I doubt not, are lost, 
and the little tap-rooms get fuller and fuller. 

And now the third thing and the best — the quay. 
A little Georgian town with a quay cannot go far 
v/rong. In its electric theatres the cinematoscope 
may buzz and dazzle; sixpenny-halfpenny bazaars 
may be opened; its beautiful old mansions may 
house gas clerks; the latest novelties may effloresce 
in its shop-windows; but the quay will keep it 
sweet. Ships and mariners will arrest the med- 
dhng hand of Time. For there is something about 
the sea that will ever refuse to come into linie. 
Wherever wind-tanned men with level eyes live 
all day in blue jerseys, there the lover of ancient 
peace may safely abide. And the quay of my little 
town and the boats in her great, spreading harbour 
are populous with such men. They arrest pro- 
gress. Even the arrival of petrol and the spectacle 
144 



A Georgian Town 



of a fishing-boat gaining the open sea in the teeth 
of a headwind at a rate of ten knots an hour has 
not injured them. The sea remains the sea in 
spite of petrol : still the capricious, dangerous mis- 
tress, never the same for two minutes together, 
never quite to be trusted, and so jealous that in no 
other direction may the eyes of her subjects rove. 

Two little tugs trot in and out of the harbour 
all day long, often enough dragging in some three- 
master that they have found in the bay; and at 
the moment that I write a big • German barque 
with a green hull lies at one wharf ; a Dutch tjalck 
at another; and a variety of coasters thrust their 
masts and spars and cordage against the evening 
sky and make it more wonderful still. And in 
one of the shipwrights' yards a huge schooner into 
whose way a man-of-war casually loafed in the 
Channel a month ago is being fitted with a new 
bowsprit and prow; and since the bowsprit that 
the man-of-war left her resembles a birchbroom, 
there is no doubt that she needs them. 

I had a little talk with one of the blue jerseys 
about smuggling. He, like myself, thought of the 
past with some regret. "I've no quarrel with a 
little smuggling," he said, in his caressing, rich 
Southern voice. "No harm in smuggling, I says, 
I don't say but what I've done some in my time. 
I don't say that I should have any objection to 
running over to Guernse}^ any day and bringing 

L 145 



Old Lamps for New 

back a ton of tubs. But the difficulty is, what to 
do with them ? And you would look so blue if 
you were caught." ''True," I said; "but surely 
there are safe landings all about there?" waving 
my hand towards the southern borders of this vast 
and mysterious harbour, so rich in creeks and 
sandy shores. "Yes," he said, "yes. But that's 
not it. You couldn't do it alone: that's the real 
trouble. And in smuggling it doesn't do to trust 
any one. No," he said, "not even your own 
brother. Not in smuggling." 



146 



Mus Penfold — and Billy ^^:> <^ ^:> ^:> 

E\'ERY man, however unobservant or incap- 
able of correlating experiences, must learn 
something in the course of his life. Some little 
thing. Circumstances will force it into his intelli- 
gence. And a truth that has just been forced into 
mine is this — that it is a foolish thing to lend your 
sheep-dog to a shepherd, for the simple reason that 
the shepherd will at once insidiously and surely 
make it his own. You may reclaim it in the 
evening, fondle it, call it "Good old Bob, then!" 
receive its half-hearted caresses, and feed it ; but 
it will be yours no longer. That is to say, its 
soul will be yours no longer, however you may 
cherish the husk. The cause is twofold — first, that 
the sheep-dog is a noble animal, who prefers work 
to sloth and a master to an owner; and, secondly, 
that shepherds are clever men, hiding under a 
simple exterior much shrewdness and quite a little 
guile. 

At any rate the shepherd to whom recently I 
made the mistake of lending my sheep-dog is a 
clever man, hiding under a simple exterior much 
shrewdness and quite a little guile; and the 

147 



Old Lamps for New 

moment for which he is living I know perfectly 
well is the moment when I shall say to him (as 
surely I shall), "Well, shepherd, you'd better call 
Bob yours after this and keep him altogether." 
He knows as well as I do that I shall say that, 
although Bob has a pedigree like a duke and the 
shepherd is accustomed to very plebeian assistants. 

Just for fun I intend to postpone that announce- 
ment as long as I can, because the shepherd and 
I understand each other and we shall both sub- 
terraneously enjoy the suspense. He knows that 
he is a bit of a schemer, and he knows that I 
know it ; I know that I am a bit of an ass, and I 
know that he knows it. As to bearing him any 
grudge for his act of subtle alienation — that is ab- 
surd. I like him too much, and I recognize too 
that he is fulfilling Nature's wish. Nature having 
devised Bob to round up sheep, and every minute 
that he spends in idleness walking at my heels 
being a defiance to her. 

This shepherd is the true breed. His father 
was a shepherd on the same farm ; his grandfather 
was a shepherd on the same farm. His name is 
drawn from his calling: not exactly Penfold, but 
akin. He is sixty-six, and he has been out in all 
weathers on-sthe South Downs ever since he was a 
child, and he has never had a cold in his life. 
His crook is never out of his hand. When it rains 
he carries also a faded green umbrella and an 
148 



Mus Penfold — and Billy 

ancient military cloak lined with red. He still 
wears a smock. He has never been to London, 
but knows Brighton railway station. He cannot 
read or write. 

The older I grow the more respect I have for 
the wise people who cannot read or write. The 
shepherd cannot read or write, yet conversation 
with him is as natural as if he knew all the jar- 
gons. I never find myself (who have both read 
and written more than is good for any one) hunting 
for words within his vocabulary. He has a sly, 
glancing humour that would make the fortune of 
an author, and observing eyes that would make the 
fortune of two. He misses nothing; and, having 
nothing to confuse and congest his mind, he has 
forgotten nothing. 

He describes well ; but his adjectives are very 
few: ''tidy" and "middling" for ordinary praise, 
"out-an'-out" for eulogy. His Bible at home is 
"out-an'-out old"; his watch "out-an'-out big." 
Where you and I say we will consider it, he says " in- 
sider. " He is that rare thing in a Southern county, 
an independent labourer. The vicar met him not 
long since, remarking that he had not seen him 
lately. "No, I beant much pestered by parsons," 
he replied. I can think of no more disconcerting reply 
to a kindly question ; but it was not cruelly meant. 
It merely comes to this, that his attitude to the world 
is defensive. 

149 



Old Lamps for New 

He regrets many things that are no more, not 
the least being the days when wheatears were 
still eaten and the shepherds had in August an 
easy way of adding to their very scanty wages by 
trapping these little plump birds and selling them 
to the Brighton poulterers. But that is all done 
with, and the only opportunity of earning a httle 
extra money that he now has is by stopping earths 
for the hunt just before the meet; which to me 
seems to be not quite playing the game. 

He looks back, too, to the smugghng days with 
a certain wistfulness; not that he did any himself, 
but he could not help knowing what was going on, 
and he remembers more than one exciting arrest; 
while his grandmother, over at LuUington, near 
Alfriston, was always well in with the smugglers, 
and once went so far as to conceal some tubs under 
her skeps, which the Revenue officer never thought 
of searching, partly, no doubt, for fear of the bees. 
But the shepherd has the same tale as the fisher- 
man in the Georgian town — the same tale, although 
the fisherman represents the sea-smugglers and the 
shepherd the land-smugglers. The end of smug- 
ghng, they both say, was not so much the vigilance 
of the coastguard as the prevalence of the informer. 
Small village life in Sussex and along the coast in 
the early years of Victoria seems to have been 
ruined by the presence of informers. A good field 
for a novelist here ! For the most part those 

150 



Mus Penfold — and Billy 

writers who have dealt with smuggling, from G. 
P. R. James to Mr, Meade Falkner, have confined 
themselves to its perils and triumphs; but the 
tale-bearer is perhaps better material — psychologi- 
cally at any rate. Anyway, it was the tale-bearer 
who prevailed, and bit by bit the old, alluring, 
dangerous game was dropped. "The man who 
lived in the cottage next to you," says the shepherd, 
''was a rare smuggler. He did more work at 
night than ever he did by day, though he had to 
show up in the fields just to keep them from being 
too suspicious." 

Although the shepherd has never been to 
London, he has done some travelling; but that, 
too, is a thing of the past. Once he used to take 
his lambs to the great Sussex "ship fairs" to be 
sold — to Lindfield and the "Bat and Ball" at 
Chiddingly, and so forth. But now that ancient 
custom also has gone, so far as he is concerned, for 
the new farmer prefers to offer them by auction at 
the nearest town; and the boy can drive them 
there. "A foolish boy," the shepherd finds him, 
"always thinking of something else instead of the 
ship. Book-learning, I suppose." . 

Mus Penfold, although mostly smiling and de- 
tached, has his anxieties too — and during the 
lambing season this year (191 1) he has been 
bowed with care. For the weather's hand was 
against him the whole time. I saw him continually 

151 



Old Lamps for New 

throughout this trying period and for the first time 
reahzed not only how sound a man he is, but how 
many quahties the good shepherd needs. For he 
must be good doctor, good midwife and good 
nurse, apart from flock management altogether; 
and he must be prepared for httle sleep, and the 
exercise of boundless patience and resignation. 
The lambs were born just across the road; and I 
was on that side almost as much as this. 

''Well, shepherd, how many now?" "'Bout 
sixty, I reckon." "How many twins?" "Eight 
couple o' twins. There's two you could put in 
your waistcoat-pocket. I'll show you." And I 
followed him through the straw of the shed, now 
divided into little hurdled cubicles, like a dor- 
mitory, with a mother and child in each, to the 
barn, where he picked up by the fore-legs two 
of the forlornest little objects you ever saw. 
"Reckon they'll die," he said. "I've been feed- 
ing them, but I reckon they'll die. They're out- 
an'-out miserable." 

Owing to the cold winds far too many did die; 
but there was "a big six hundred," as the shepherd 
said, by the time all were in this green world. 
When a lamb died Mus Penfold removed its skin 
and placed it on the back of another for whom a 
foster-mother was needed. Then he put the living 
one thus clad into the pen with the bereaved 
mother, who, smelling its skin and finding it true, 
152 



Mus Penfold — and Billy 

adopted the changeling without a murmur. The 
skin is fitted on rather ingeniously, with the living 
lamb's legs through holes left for them and the 
neck tied with string; but it would take in no 
one with any intelligence. Either sheep are very 
incurious or the maternal instinct makes them 
careless, for the deception almost always succeeds. 
On the other hand, the maternal instinct can fail 
utterly; and there were usually one or two sheep 
whose heads had to be tied close to the hurdle to 
prevent them butting their lambs away. 

This lambing season, by the way, was the only 
time when I ever saw the shepherd using his crook. 
As I have said, he carries it with him all the year 
• — in fact, it is as inseparably his as the emblem of 
a Saint; but he never ordinarily uses it except as 
a staff or a gentle chastener of his dogs. But 
lately it was busy. I found him dragging new- 
born lambs over the straw with it, from the yard 
to the maternity ward, while he carried another 
by its fore-legs. The act looks, if not exactly 
cruel, at any rate thoughtless; but this is not so, 
for the shepherd is a tender man. 

I never see a crowd of sheep without wanting 
a picture of them and thinking of pictures of 
others, although one can see cattle and horses 
and dogs and have no such pictorial wish or as- 
sociation. Why is this? Is it because sheep are 
so essentially pictorial — because, in the artist's 

153 



Old Lamps for New 

phrase, they always "compose"? I suppose so. 
However they stand or lie they make a harmony. 
That is why one so seldom sees a picture of sheep 
that is wholly bad; and similarly it is why every 
photograph of sheep is also a picture. An artist 
who sets out to depict sheep and makes an out- 
rage must be crude indeed. No artist understood 
sheep better than Blake, although his type was, 
perhaps, a Httle too Eastern. But he made sheep 
lie about and occur exactly as sheep do. He did 
not force them into a picture, as Charles Jacque 
was a little too much inclined to do, nor pose 
them like Sidney Cooper. But then I have never 
seen sheep m real life like Sidney Cooper's. My 
own favourite painters of sheep are Edward Cal- 
vert, Mauve, and J. F. Millet ; but I possess a 
tiny drawing by Robert Hills, one of the founders 
of the Old • Water-colour Society, which has as 
much feeling as any. I saw Millet's most beauti- 
ful sheep-picture quite recently — his "Bergere 
gardant ses Moutons" under a full moon, and it 
is wonderful. I saw also three or four Jacques in 
the same collection — the new Chauchard Collec- 
tion, just opened at the Louvre — and he again 
seemed to me a shade too brilliant for his subject. 
Millet came to his sheep as a part of life — the" 
homely, melancholy, busy life that he knew — and 
painted them exactly in their relation to it ; Jacque 
came to them rather as a heaven-sent subject for 



Mus Pcnfold — and Billy 

his brush. Millet, of course, poetised them, as he 
was bound to do, but never to their detriment : 
they remained sheep, just as his peasants, though 
poetised, remained peasants. Mauve saw sheep 
also as a part of the universe, but rather as a part 
of Nature than of life. Nor had Mauve Millet's 
wistful depths. But there is a flock of sheep by 
Mauve, passing over the Laren dunes, that reaches, 
perhaps, the highest mark of true and beautiful 
animal-painting. Among the Old Masters I recall 
with most pleasure the sheep of the Bassano 
family, father and sons. In the gallery at Vienna 
they have a room to themselves, and a more 
attractive collection of warm stables and mangers 
I never saw. It is when I think of such pictures 
as these that my brain swoons at the idea of what 
the post-impressionists would make of a scene of 
sheep. There were none at the Grafton Galleries 
recently. May there never be any ! 

One pleasant development of sheep-nature that 
the lambing season brings about is accessibility. 
Usually there is no intercourse possible between 
man and sheep, except by the hard medium of a 
crook. Why sheep are so mistrustful I have never 
understood ; for no one would hurt them, not even 
boys on Sunday afternoons. They know too that 
to man's care they owe all their food and comfort, 
and yet the sight of a strange man or a child 
equally fills them with panic. How different a 

155 



Old Lamps for New 

little early training can make sheep the adorable 
Billy proves. For Billy is as much a part of the 
human family as any child or grandfather ever was. 

Billy is a pet lamb in the Midlands — in a river 
valley far from these austere hills. He is thick 
and sturdy, with a black face. He fears no one 
and nothing. His favourite resting-place is the 
very middle of a frequented path. When tired of 
repose he saunters about looking for mischief. If 
the gate is open he strolls into the street and pursues 
and butts the children. No lamb can ever have 
so entertained and exhilarated so many grown-up 
people. The children run and shout, Billy lowers 
his head and leaps and dances, the people rush to 
the doors to enjoy the fun. When there are no 
children he chases the hens or explores the back- 
gardens. Billy is fed with milk in an old oil can 
and at this formidable vessel he plunges several 
times a day, as though he had never eaten before, 
although he has been picking up trifles since 
dawn; and even when filled he rarely allows a 
stranger to pass without groping at his knees in 
an effort to derive sustenance from them. 

I have never seen any other animal with more 
character than this three months old lamb. He 
is alive with it, as we say. His countenance is 
jaunty; his movements are elvish. He is in short 
an imp, as unlike, on the one hand, the timid 
foolish sheep of which our flocks are composed as, 
156 



Mus Pcnfold — and Billy 

on the other, the sentimental pet lamb of Words- 
worth's poem. Looking at him one realizes what 
a waste of good spirits the ordinary method of 
sheep-rearing and sheep-tending leads to. If all 
lambs could be brought up by hand, one thinks, 
how merrie would England be ! 

But I have not put this possibility before Mus 
Tenfold. He would smell something very treason- 
able. A humourist he may be, but he is no Radical. 



157 



Theologians at the Mitre ^=^::^ ^^ ^^:> <::^ 

I REMEMBER hearing an ingenious journalist 
remarli that if ever he were appointed editor 
of a literary paper he would now and then devote 
a whole number to reviews of one book only, each 
review to be the work of a critic of eminence who 
was unaware that his verdict was not (as is usual) 
the only one that would be printed. "Thus," he 
added, "I should make an interesting number of 
my paper, while the differences of opinion in the 
reviews would healthily illustrate the vanity of 
criticism." 

After having just read, with much entertain- 
ment, in an old book, the record of the travels in 
England of an intelligent German in the year 1782. 
I am inclined to think that, were I the editor of a 
general paper, I should adapt my friend's idea, 
and now and then induce several foreigners to 
visit my city or country and record their impres- 
sions in parallel columns; just to show the reader 
how we strike contemporaries and strangers. But 
here, of course, the differences of opinion would 
rather tend to complete the picture than to bring 
criticism into disrepute. The result would be like 

158 



Theologians at the Mitre 

those myriad reflections of oneself that are ob- 
tained from the triple mirrors in hatters' shops — 
all true, all different, and some exceedingly un- 
familiar and surprising. 

If one of my observers were a man as shrewd 
and philosophic as Charles Moritz, the 1782 
traveller, the excellence of one column at any rate 
of that number would be assured, for Moritz had 
both eyes and a brain. 

A pastor in his native land, he sailed for Eng- 
land alone in May, 1782, bent upon seeing London 
and, for some unexplained reason, the Peak of 
Derbyshire. He knew the language perfectly, 
from books; and he brought to his adventure an 
open and tolerant mind, courage, determination 
and humour. As it turned out, he found himself 
in need of all these qualities. Indeed, no good 
traveller can be without any of them. He wrote 
in German : my copy of his work was translated 
"by a Lady." 

Let us disembark at Dartford on 2 June, 1782, 
with Mr. Moritz, and proceed with him to London 
in a postchaise, by way of Greenwich. I have 
read of postchaises before, but never found them 
so vividly or informingly described as by this 
German pastor. It is worth while to pause a 
moment before going farther and ask ourselves 
what we know of postchaises in England in 1782. 
It will make Mr. Moritz the more interesting. 

159 



Old Lamps for New 

Speaking for myself, I certainly did not know that 
three persons might (by Act of Parliament) ride 
for the same cost as one, and that the charge was 
fixed at a shilHng a mile. Had you realized that? 
I had always thought of the postchaise as a luxury 
for the rich only, but this brings it within reach 
of much humbler purses. And now for the Ger- 
man: "These carriages are very neat and lightly 
built, so that you hardly perceive their motion, as 
they roll along these firm smooth roads; they have 
windows in front, and on both sides. The horses 
are generally good, and the postilions particularly 
smart and active, and always ride on a full trot. 
The one we had wore his hair cut short, a round 
hat, and a brown jacket, of tolerable fine cloth, 
with a nosegay in his bosom. Now and then, 
when he drove very hard, he looked round, and 
with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation." 
This is quite a picture, is it not? Dickens could 
have made the postboy look round no less brightly 
and triumphantly, but he would have given him 
jokes. This is Dickens without language: Dickens 
on the cinematoscope. 

The road to London is very prettily etched in. 
"A thousand charming spots, and beautiful land- 
scapes, on which my eye would long have dwelt 
with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the 
speed of an arrow. Our road appeared to be 
undulatory, and our journey, like the journey of 
1 60 



Theologians at the Mitre 

life, seemed to be a pretty regular alternation of 
uphill and down, and here and there it was di- 
versilied with copses and woods ; the majestic 
Thames every now and then, like a httle forest of 
masts, rising to our view, and anon losing itself 
among the delightful towns and villages. The 
amazing large signs which, at the entrance of 
villages, hang in the middle of the street, being 
fastened to large beams, which are extended across 
the street from one house to another opposite it, 
particularly struck me ; these sign-posts have the 
appearance of gates, or of gateways, for which I 
first took them, but the whole apparatus, unnec- 
essarily large as it seems to be, is intended for 
nothing more than to tell the inquisitive traveller 
that there is an inn. At length, stunned as it 
w^ere by this constant rapid succession of interest- 
ing objects to engage our attention, we arrived at 
Greenwich nearly in a state of stupefaction." 

It is very much as a few years ago men wTote 
of their first motor-car ride, or as Mr. Grahame 
Wliite's passengers wTite now. 

In London Mr. Moritz lodged with a tailor's 
widow somewhere near the Adelphi. The family 
consisted "of the mistress of the house, her maid, 
and her two sons, Jacky and Jerry; singular ab- 
breviations for John and Jeremiah. The eldest, 
Jacky, about twelve years old, is a very lively boy, 
and often entertains me in the most pleasing man- 
M i6i 



Old Lamps for New 

ner, by relating to me his different employments at 
school and afterwards desiring me, in my turn, to 
relate to him all manner of things about Germany. 
He repeats his amo, amas, amavi, in the same sing- 
ing tone as our common-school boys. As I hap- 
pened once, when he was by, to hum a lively tune, he 
stared at me with surprise, and then reminded me 
it was Sunday; and so, that I might not forfeit his 
good opinion by any appearance of levity, I gave 
him to understand that, in the hurry of my journey, 
I had forgotten the day. . . . When the maid is 
displeased with me, I hear her sometimes at the 
door call me 'the German'; otherwise in the family 
I go by the name of 'the Gentleman.'" Quite an 
Addisonian touch. 

The tailor's widow was a woman out of the com- 
mon, for a favourite author of hers was Milton, 
and she told her lodger that her ''late husband first 
fell in love with her on this very account : because 
she read Milton with such proper emphasis." 
This endeared her to her lodger too, for a pocket 
Milton was his inseparable companion during his 
travels. But I fear that when he proceeds to 
deduce from the widow a general love of the 
great authors among even the common English 
people, he goes too far. He made indeed the mis- 
take that be might make to-day, when cheap re- 
prints of classics are far more numerous than they 
were then : the mistake of supposing that people 
162 



Theologians at the Mitre 

read what they possess. Classics are still largely 
furniture and decoration. For the most part, I 
fear, the owners of the hundred best books are 
reading something from the circulating library. 

The widow and her servant looked after him 
well, giving him bread and butter cut as thin as 
"poppy leaves." But what he liked even better 
was their toast: *' another kind of bread and butter 
usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, 
and is incomparably good. You take one slice after 
the other and hold it to the fire on a fork till the 
butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number 
of slices at once. This is called toast." — That 
seems to be a very pleasant touch. I wonder into 
how many books of travel in England toast has 
found its way. 

His curiosity took him everywhere, sometimes 
without any introduction, and sometimes with a 
letter from the German Minister, Count Lucy. 
His first experience of the House of Commons, 
with no influence at his back, was amusing and 
illuminating. "Above there is a small staircase, 
by which you go to the gallery, the place allotted 
for strangers. The first time I went up this small 
staircase and had reached the rails, I saw a very 
genteel man in black standing there. I accosted 
him without any introduction, and asked him 
whether I might be allowed to go in the gallery. 
He told me that I must be introduced by a 
163 



Old Lamps for New 

Member, or else I could not get admission there. 
Now, as I had not the honour to be acquainted 
with a Member, I was under the mortifying neces- 
sity of retreating, and again going downstairs: as 
I did, much chagrined. And now, as I was sullenly 
marching back, I heard something said about a 
bottle of wine, which seemed to be addressed to 
me. I could not conceive what it could mean, 
till I got home, when my obliging landlady told 
me, I should have given the well-dressed man 
half a crown, or a couple of shillings, for a bottle 
of wine. 

"Happy," he says, "in this information, I went 
again the next day; when the same man who 
before had sent me away, after I had given him 
only two shillings, very politely opened the door 
for me, and himself recommended me to a good 
seat in the gallery." 

Manners in Parliament seem to have improved 
a little. Mr. Moritz says: "The Members of 
the House of Commons have nothing particular in 
their dress ; they even come into the house in their 
great-coats, and with boots and spurs. Jt is not 
at all uncommon to see a Member lying stretched 
out on one of the benches while others are debat- 
ing. Some crack nuts, others eat oranges, or 
whatever else is in season. There is no end to 
their going in or out ; and as often as any one 
wishes to go out, he places himself before the 
164 



Theologians at the Mitre 

Speaker, and makes him his bow, as if, like a 
school-boy, he asked his tutor's permission. Those 
who speak, seem to deliver themselves with but 
little, perhaps not always with even a decorous, 
gravity. All that is necessary is to stand up in 
your place, take off your hat, turn to the Speaker 
(to whom all the speeches are addressed), to hold 
your hat and stick in one hand, and with the other 
to make any such motions as you fancy necessary 
to accompany your speech." 

^Ir. Moritz had good fortune, for he heard both 
Fox and Burke. He writes: "Charles Fox is a 
short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complex- 
ion, and dark; and in general he is badly dressed. 
There certainly is something Jewish in his looks. 
But upon the whole, he is not an ill-made nor an 
ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks 
of sagacity and fire in his eyes. I have frequently 
heard the people here say, that this same Mr. Fox 
is as cunning as a fox. Burke is a well-made, tall, 
upright man, but looks elderly and broken." 
Burke was then only fifty-three, but he had just 
been excluded from the Cabinet. 

A few w^eks later, on his return to London, 
Moritz was again in the House to hear the debate 
on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham. Fox, 
General Conway, and Burke were the speakers. 
This is interesting: ''Burke now stood up and made 
a most elegant, though florid speech, in praise of the 

165 



Old Lamps for New 

late Marquis of Rockingham. As he did not meet 
with sufficient attention, and heard much talking 
and many murmurs, he said, with much vehe- 
mence, and a sense of injured merit, 'This is not 
treatment for so old a Member of Parhament as I 
am, and I will be heard ! ' On which there was 
immediately a most profound silence." 

Living authors seem to have had no interest for 
Mr. Moritz, and therefore we get no ghmpse of 
Dr. Johnson; but he saw everything else. He 
went to Ranelagh and Vauxhall ; to many of the 
churches, even preaching in one; to the British 
Museum and to the theatre, where he was so much 
taken with a musical farce called "The Agreeable 
Surprise" that he saw it again and wished to 
translate it into German. Edwin was the princi- 
pal comedian. Although the play was good, the 
audience was very uncivil. 

Here again it is not uninstructive to pause and 
ask ourselves for our views on the London theatre- 
gallery in 1782. It had not occurred to me that 
the gods were quite as high-spirited and powerful 
as Mr. Moritz describes them. In his seat in the 
pit Mr. Moritz became at once their target ; but 
whether it was because he looked foreign, or be- 
cause he had the effrontery to be able to afford to 
sit there, is not explained. 

"Often and often, whilst I sat here, did a rotten 
orange or pieces of the peel of an orange fly past 
166 



Theologians at the Mitre 

mc, or past some of my neighbours, and once one 
of them actually hit my hat : without my daring 
to look round, for fear another might then hit me 
on the face. Besides this perpetual pelting from 
the gallery, which renders an English play-house so 
uncomfortable, there is no end to their calling out 
and knocking with their sticks, till the curtain is 
drawn up. I saw a miller's, or a baker's boy thus, 
like a huge booby, leaning over the rails and 
knocking again and again on the outside, with 
all his might, so that he was seen by everybody, 
without being in the least ashamed or abashed. 

'*In the boxes, quite in a corner, sat several 
servants, who were said to be placed there to keep 
the seats for the families they served, till they 
should arrive; they seemed to sit remarkably 
close and still, the reason of which, I was told, was 
their apprehension of being pelted ; for if one of 
them dares to look out of the box, he is immediately 
saluted with a shower of orange peel from the 
gallery." And here the London experiences end. 

Now for the open road. Having coached to 
Richmond, IVIr. Moritz set out to reach Oxford on 
foot, sleeping at whatever village he came to at 
nightfall. But he was not very fortunate, either 
because he fell among peculiarly rude and inhos- 
pitable folk or because his appearance was so odd 
as to be irresistible. A traveller on foot in this 
country, he says, "seems to be considered as a sort 
167 



Old Lamps for New 

of wild man, or out-of-the-way being, who is 
stared at, pitied, suspected and shunned by every- 
body that meets him. At least this has hitherto 
been my case, on the road from Richmond to 
Windsor. When I was tired, I sat down in the 
shade under the hedges, and read Milton. But 
this relief was soon rendered disagreeable to me; 
for those who rode, or drove, past me, stared at 
me with astonishment ; and made many significant 
gestures, as if they thought my head deranged. So 
singular must it needs have appeared to them to 
see a man sitting along the side of a public road, 
and reading. I therefore found myself obliged, 
when I wished to rest myself and read, to look out 
for a retired spot in some by-lane or cross-road. 

"Many of the coachmen who drove by called 
out to me, ever and anon, and asked if I would 
not ride on the outside; and when, every now and 
then, a farmer on horseback met me, he said, and 
seemingly with an air of pity for me, "Tis warm 
walking, sir ! ' and when I passed through a village, 
every old woman testified her pity by an exclama- 
tion of 'Good God!'-'' 

His troubles continued, for an Eton inn refused 
to admit him at all, and the servants at the 
Windsor inn did all they could to make him 
uncomfortable. He had his revenge, however. 
"As I was going away, the waiter, who had 
served me with so very ill a grace, placed himself 
i68 



Theologians at the Mitre 

on the stairs, and said, 'Pray remember the 
waiter ! ' I gave him three halfpence : on which 

he saluted me with the heartiest 'G — d d n 

you, sir!' I had ever heard. At the door stood 
the cross maid, who also accosted me with 'Pray 
remember the chambermaid!' — 'Yes, yes,' said I, 
'I shall long remember your most ill-mannered 
behaviour and shameful incivihty'; and so I gave 
her nothing. I hope she was stung and nettled 
by my reproof : howxver, she strove to stifle her 
anger by a contemptuous, loud horse-laugh." 

An adventure with a foot-pad and rebuffs from 
other landlords followed, but in the Kttle Berkshire 
village of Nettlebed, five miles north-west of 
Henley, he found repose. Nettlebed remained in 
his mind as the most charming spot in England: 
he liked the inn, he liked the people, and he liked 
the church. His description of the inn actually 
re-creates the past; indeed, it is not unworthy to 
stand beside that description of that inn in "The 
Old Curiosity Shop" in which the nature of dwarfs 
and giants was so illuminatingly discussed, over 
the landlord's wonderful stew. 

'"May I stay here to-night?' I asked with 
eagerness. 

"'Why, yes, you may.' — An answer which, how- 
ever cold and surly, made me exceedingly happy. 

"They showed me into the kitchen, and let me 
sit down to sup at the same table with some 
169 



Old Lamps for New 

soldiers and the servants. I now, for the first 
time, found myself in one of their kitchens which 
I had so often read of in Fielding's fine novels, 
and which certainly give one, on the whole, a very 
accurate idea of English manners. 

''The chimney in this kitchen, where they were 
roasting and boiling, seemed to be taken off from 
the rest of the room and enclosed by a wooden 
partition: the rest of the apartment was made use 
of as a sitting and eating room. All round on the 
sides were shelves with pewter dishes and plates, 
and the ceiling was well stored with provisions of 
various kinds, such as sugar-loaves, black-puddings, 
hams, sausages, flitches of bacon, etc. 

''While I was eating, a post-chaise drove up; 
and in a moment both the folding-doors were 
thrown open, and the whole house set in motion, 
in order to receive, with all due respect, these 
guests, who, no doubt, were supposed to be persons 
of consequence. The gentlemen alighted, however, 
only for a moment, and called for nothing but a 
couple of pots of beer ; and then drove away again. 
Notwithstanding the people of the house behaved 
to them with all possible attention, for they came 
in a post-chaise." 

On at last tearing himself from Nettlebed,. after 
three futile efforts, Mr. Moritz walked to Dor- 
chester, where he hoped to sleep but was not per- 
mitted. Late at night, therefore, he set out for 
170 



Theologians at the Mitre 

Oxford, and was joined on the way by another 
traveller to the same city, a young clergyman. 
They reached Oxford just before midnight, and 
]\Ir. ]\Ioritz proposed to sleep on a stone. "No 
no," said his companion : and here we come to the 
gem of the book. 

Hitherto Mr. IMoritz has been now and then a 
little caustic and always an alert observer, holding 
himself well in hand ; but in the next two pages a 
very delightful satirical glint appears. I consider 
the midnight theological conversation that follows 
by no means unworthy to be remembered along 
with Hogarth's picture of a not dissimilar occa- 
sion. Whether it is known at Oxford I have not 
inquired ; but I have several friends there who 
would immensely relish it. 

"'No, no,'" said his friend, "'come along with 
me to a neighbouring ale-house, where it is possible 
they mayn't be gone to bed and we may yet find 
company.' We went on a few houses further, and 
then knocked at a door. It was then nearly 
twelve. They readily let us in; but how great 
was my astonishment when, on being shown into 
a room on the left, I saw a great number of clergy- 
men, all with their gowns and bands on, sitting 
round a large table, each with his pot of beer be- 
fore him. ]\Iy travelling companion introduced 
me to them, as a German clergyman, whom he 
could not sufficiently praise for my correct pro- 
171 



Old Lamps for New 

nunciation of the Latin, my orthodoxy, and my 
good walking. 

"I now saw myself in a moment, as it were, all 
at once transported into the midst of a company, 
all apparently very respectable men, but all 
strangers to me. And it appeared to me very 
extraordinary that I should, thus at midnight, be 
in Oxford, in a large company of Oxonian clergy, 
without well knowing how I had got there. 
Meanwhile, however, I took all the pains in my 
power to recommend myself to my company, and 
in the course of conversation I gave them as good 
an account as I could of our German universities, 
neither denying nor concealing that, now and then, 
we had riots and disturbances. '0, we are very 
unruly here too,' said one of the clergymen, as he 
took a hearty draught out of his pot of beer, and 
knocked on the table with his hand. The conver- 
sation now became louder, more general, and a 
little confused; they enquired after Mr. Bruns, at 
present professor at Helmstadt, who was known 
by many of them. 

"Among these gentlemen there was one of the 
name of Clerk, who seemed ambitious to pass for 
a great wit, which he attempted by starting 
sundry objections to the Bible. I should have 
liked him better if he had confined himself to 
punning and playing on his own name, by telling 
us again and again, that he should still be at least 
172 



Theologians at the Mitre 

a Clerk, even though he should never become a 
clergyman. Upon the whole, however, he was, in 
his way, a man of some humour, and an agreeable 
companion. 

''Among other objections to the Scriptures, he 
stated this one to my travelling companion, whose 
name I now learnt was Maud, that it was said in 
the Bible that God was a wine-bibber and a drunk- 
ard. On this ]\Ir. Maud fell into a violent passion, 
and maintained that it was utterly impossible for 
any such passage to be found in the Bible. An- 
other divine, a ]\Ir. Caern, referred us to his absent 
brother, who had already been forty years in the 
Church, and must certainly know something of 
such a passage if it were in the Bible, but he would 
venture to lay any wager his brother knew nothing 
of it. 

"'Waiter! fetch a Bible!' called out Mr. 
Clerk, and a great family Bible was immediately 
brought in, and opened on the table among all 
the beer jugs. 

"Mr. Clerk turned over a few leaves, and in 
the book of Judges, 9th chapter, verse 13, he 
read, 'Should I leave my wine, which cheereth 
God and man ? ' 

"Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern, who had before 
been most violent, now sat as if struck dumb. A 
silence of some minutes prevailed, when all at 
once the spirit of revelation seemed to come on 

173 



Old Lamps for New 

me, and I said, 'Why, gentlemen, you must be 
sensible that it is but an allegorical expression; 
and,' I added, 'how often in the Bible are kings 
called Gods ! ' 

"'Why, yes, to be sure,' said Mr. Maud and 
Mr. Caern, 'it is an allegorical expression; no- 
thing can be more clear; it is a metaphor, and 
therefore it is absurd to understand it in a literal 
sense.' And now they, in their turn, triumphed 
over poor Clerk, and drank large draughts to my 
health. Mr. Clerk, however, had not yet ex- 
hausted his quiver, and so he desired them to ex- 
plain to him a passage in the prophecy of Isaiah, 
where it is said in express terms that God is a 
barber. Mr. Maud was so enraged at this, that he 
called Clerk an impudent fellow; and Mr. Caern 
again and yet more earnestly referred us to his 
brother, who had been forty years in the Church, 
and who therefore, he doubted not, would also 
consider Mr. Clerk as an impudent fellow, if he 
maintained any such abominable notions. [This 
is sheer Dickens, isn't it ?] 

"Mr. Clerk all this while sat perfectly com- 
posed, without either a smile or a frown; but 
turning to a passage in Isaiah, chapter xx, verse 
7, he read these words: 'In the same day the 
Lord shall shave with a razor . . . the head, and 
the hair of the feet : and it shall also consume the 
beard.' If Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern were before 
174 



1 



Thcoloiriaiis at the Mitre 

stunned and confounded, they were much more 
so now ; and even Mr. Caern's brother, who had 
been forty years in the Church, seemed to have 
left them in the lurch, for he was no longer re- 
ferred to. I broke silence a second time, and 
said, 'Why, gentlemen, this also is clearly meta- 
phorical, and it is equally just, strong and beauti- 
ful.' 'Aye, to be sure it is,' rejoined Mr. Maud 
and Mr. Caern both in a breath; at the same 
time rapping the table with their knuckles. I 
went on, and said, 'You know it was the custom 
for those who were captives to have their heads 
shorn ; the plain import, then, of this remarkable 
expression is nothing more than that God would 
deliver the rebellious Jews to be prisoners to a 
foreign people, who would shave their beards !' 
'Aye, to be sure it is; anybody may see it is; 
why it is as clear as the day!' 'So it is,' rejoined 
]\Ir. Caern, 'and my brother, who has been forty 
years in the Church, explains it just as this gentle- 
man does.' 

"We had now gained a second victory over Mr. 
Clerk ; who being perhaps ashamed either of him- 
self or of us, now remained quiet, and made no 
further objections to the Bible. My health, how- 
ever, was again encored, and drunk in strong ale; 
which, as my company seemed to like so much, I 
was sorry I could not like. It either intoxicated or 
stupefied me ; and I do think it overpowers one 

175 



Old Lamps for New 

much sooner than so much wine could. The con- 
versation now turned on many different subjects. 
At last, when morning drew near, Mr. Maud 

suddenly exclaimed, 'D n me, I must read 

prayers this morning at All-Souls!'" 

The scene of that convivial disputation was the 
"Mitre"; and if there are any other equally 
amusing descriptions of a night in that inn I should 
like to read them. It reflects credit, not only upon 
the traveller, but also upon the very young lady, 
his translator, whose name, according to the edi- 
torial preface, was "fragrant with exemplary 
piety." 

Mr, Maud, before he departed on his conscien- 
tious errand, arranged to call for Mr. Moritz and 
show him Oxford ; but the strong ale had been too 
much for the foreigner and he was not able to see 
the city till the day following. He was then 
taken to Corpus Christi and All Souls and other 
colleges. While "going along the street, we met 
the English poet laureate, Warton, now rather an 
elderly man; and yet he is still the fellow of a 
college. His greatest pleasure, next to poetry, is, 
as Mr. Maud told me, shooting wild ducks." 
After Oxford, Mr. Moritz visited Stratford-on 
Avon, which he reached in a coach. And after 
Stratford-on-Avon, he saw Birmingham and the 
Peak of Derbyshire, and so returned to London 
and Germany, He had other adventures and en- 
176 



Theologians at the Mitre 

counters, all described with liveliness; but here I 
must stop. 

The ideal travel book could, I suppose, be 
written only by the Wandering Jew, who, never 
ceasing, as he does, to perambulate this globe, re- 
turning periodically, as one imagines, to every 
country, has it in his power in each successive 
description to note not only physical but social 
changes. I don't know what intervals elapse be- 
tween his visits to London, but they must be 
sufficiently lengthy to permiit of very noticeable 
alterations, perceptible even to a footsore and 
disenchanted Hebrew of incredible age. In de- 
fault of this ancient peripatetic, no one could do it 
better than Halley's Comet, whose visits are paid 
punctually every seventy-four years. 



177 



The Windmill ^:::y -^^r^y <:::> ^::^ ^^^ ^=^:> 

CHANCE recently made me for a while the 
tenant of a windmill. Not to live in, and 
unhappily not to grind corn in, but to visit as the 
mood arose, and see the ships in the harbour from 
the topmost window, and look down on the sheep 
and the green world all around. For this mill 
stands high and white — so white, indeed, that 
when there is a thunder-cloud behind it, it seems 
a thing of polished aluminium. 

From its windows you can see four other mills, 
all, like itself, idle, and one merely a ruin and one 
with only two sweeps left. But just over the next 
range of hills, out of sight, to the north-east, is 
a windmill that still merrily goes, and about five 
miles away to the north-west is another also active ; 
so that things are not quite so bad hereabouts as 
in many parts of the country, where the good 
breezes blow altogether in vain. And recently as 
all the world knows there has been a boom in whole- 
meal bread which was to set many a pair of derelict 
mill-stones in action again. 

Thinking over the losses which England has had 
forced upon her by steam and the ingenuity of 
178 



The Windmill 

the engineer, one is disposed to count the decay 
of the windmill among the first. Perhaps in the 
matter of pure picturesqueness the most serious 
thing that ever happened to England was the 
discovery of galvanized iron roofing; but, after 
all, there was never anything but quiet and rich 
and comfortable beauty about red roofs, whereas the 
living windmill is not only beautiful but romantic 
too : a willing, man-serving creature, yoked to the 
elements, a whirling monster, often a thing of 
terror. No one can stand very near the crashing 
sweeps of a windmill in half a gale without a tight- 
ening of the heart — a feeling comparable to that 
which comes from watching the waves break over a 
wall in a storm. And to be within the mill at such a 
time is to know something of sound's very sources; 
it is the cave of noise itself. No doubt there are 
dens of hammering energy which are more shat- 
tering, but the noise of a windmill is largely 
natural, the product of wood striving with the 
good sou'-wester ; it fills the ears rather than 
assaults them. The effect, moreover, is by no 
means lessened by the absence of the wind itself 
and the silent nonchalance of the miller and his 
man, who move about in the midst of this appall- 
ing racket with the quiet efficiency of vergers. 

In my mill, of course, there is no such uproar; 
nothing but the occasional shaking of the cross- 
pieces of the idle sails. Everything is still, and 
179 



Old Lamps for New 

the pity of it is that everything is in almost perfect 
order for the day's work. The mill one day — some 
score years ago — was full of life ; the next, and 
ever after, mute and lifeless, like a stream frozen 
in a night or the palace in Tennyson's ballad of 
the ''Sleeping Beauty." There is no decay — 
merely inanition. One or two of the apple- wood 
cogs have been broken from the great wheel ; a 
few floor planks have been rotted ; but that is all. 
A week's overhauling would put everything right. 
But it will never come, and the cheerful winds 
that once were to drive a thousand English mills 
so happily now bustle over the Channel in vain. 

Not the least attractive thing about my mill is 
its profound woodenness. There is not enough 
iron in it to fill a wheelbarrow. The walls are 
wood, the sweeps, the brake, the wheels, the cogs 
(apple as I have said : how long were they dis- 
covering that apple was best, I wonder). Those 
fishing-smacks which from the topmost window we 
see on the grey waters do not owe more to the 
friendly forest. 

I know a man who takes the loss of the wind- 
mill so much to heart that he is making a wind- 
mill map. He is beginning with Sussex only and 
marking with a cross every place — so far as he 
can now ascertain — where a windmill once stood. 
"That will show them what they have lost!" he 
says bitterly. ''That will teach them to prefer 
i8o 



The Windmill 

steam!" The crosses will crowd like lovers' 
kisses in some parts, for Sussex was a county of 
millers, and all over the Downs now one comes 
upon shallow pits from which ancient mills have 
been dug and dispersed. Imaginative archaeol- 
ogists find a thousand fantastic explanations of 
these hollows, and one even has been claimed for a 
prehistoric observatory ; but all the time they are 
merely the foundations of windmills: nothing more 
romantic than that, and nothing less romantic. 

To me, at any rate, this map will be a melan- 
choly document. How much more so would it be 
to that greatest of mill-lovers and mill-painters and 
himself a miller and miller's son, John Constable, 
could he see it ! The Sussex mill-map alone would 
cause him to weep tears, for, though an alien, he 
knew our mills well, and painted many of them. 
Even at Brighton (such is the incorruptible beauty of 
these structures) he found mills to paint. One or 
two, indeed, still remain, but they are blackened 
stumps merely — only the ruins of the radiant aerial 
creatures of their prime, when the master sat be- 
fore them wdth those paints and brushes w^hose 
magic secret it was to preserve and glorify English 
weather for all time. You will find some of these 
sketches in South Kensington Museum, particularly 
that masterpiece of wind and joyousness called 
"Spring," which depicts the very mill in which 
the youthful artist, when milling was still his 



Old Lamps for New 

destiny, worked ; and a favourite of mine is the 
"Mill Near Brighton," seen over the shoulder of a 
poppied field, that hangs in the Salting collection 
at the National Gallery. Mr. Salting showed it 
to me soon after he bought it, and I longed for 
enough moral courage to snatch it from his hand 
and run. But one's ordinary invertebrate easy 
rectitude prevailed, and I lost it. 

Constable's grief, I say, would be deep as he 
scanned this Sussex map for his lost darlings. 
How much more so when the Suffolk mill-map 
was laid before him ! He used to say that a miller 
has a better chance to study the sky than any man : 
that is, on land. Certainly if he had never been 
a miller his own skies would not have the Hving 
truth that is theirs. 

As to the loss of the miller, that is a matter that 
does not bear thinking about. That the elimina- 
tion of this character, historically so shrewd and 
so genial, from the countryside should be borne 
with such equanimity proves the carelessness and 
apathy of England more almost than the rise of 
the dust-evolving, road-devouring car. And what 
chance has the English ballad poetry of the future 
with no millers to celebrate? But perhaps the 
bread boom will really bring him back. Devoutly 
do I hope so, for the only thing more beautiful in a 
landscape than a mill that is still is a mill that is 
active. 

182 



A Glimpse of Civilization -=::> ^^:> ^:> ^:^ 

THE sign of this inn, like that of so many in 
the fair land of France, was "Les Quatre 
Fils d'Aymon"; and who Aymon was, and what 
his four sons did, I wonder how many EngHsh 
people know. Aymon w^as the Duke of Dordogne, 
and his sons were Renaud, Guiscard, Alard, and 
Richard, and you may read of them in a twelfth- 
century French romance and in Victor Hugo's 
Legcnde des Sleeks. So much I can state, but no 
more. There are certain things that one's memory 
will not retain, and the story of Aymon and his 
four sons is one of them. I have equal difficulty 
in remembering for certain whether the pen is 
mightier than the sword or the sword mightier 
than the pen. 

But Aymon and his quartette matter nothing. 
What docs matter is that in a French inn you may 
be as witty as you can, as intelligent as you can, 
but some one there will be more intelligent, more 
witty. We came to this inn, which is some three 
leagues distant from Paris, about five in the after- 
noon on a bitter, snowy day. We made the jour- 
ney in a motor-car through the bleakest country 
I ever saw, chiefly over pave, right from the heart 
1S3 



Old Lamps for New 

of Paris, and the sign of Aymon and his family 
was the first to greet our eyes, strain them as we 
might. Hence, since there are few pleasures to 
compare with that of entering a warm inn while 
one is on a cold journey, we were very happy when 
the door closed behind us, and the rays of the 
circular stove in the middle of the room drew us 
to it like tentacles. 

Where was the patron? (We had heard of the 
patron as a character.) The patron, being also the 
chef, was in the kitchen — a vast, clean kitchen, 
with a glowing fire, and myriad copper pots on the 
walls ; but he very willingly called in a heuten- 
ant, and then brought certain hot cordials and 
himself to our table. Consider an EngHsh inn- 
keeper being found at five in the afternoon in a 
spotless kitchen, himself in spotless white, and 
leaving it to discuss the world at large with two 
guests of a few minutes ! For that is what we did 
— we discussed affairs. He had the "Petit Jour- 
nal" before him, and we went through the pictures, 
and he dismissed men and matters with grunts and 
chuckles. He knew the world. He had lived and 
he knew. Napoleon HI had once dined in this 
very inn, and a copper pipkin w^as still preserved 
on the kitchen wall in which part of the Impe- 
rial meal had been cooked; but it was nothing 
to our Httle host. President Fallieres lunched 
there only a few months ago — in that very chair 
184 



A Glimpse of Civilization 

— but that also was nothing to him. Life is an 
individual business ; life comes first ; and an inn- 
keeper has as much life to live as any one else, be 
it Emperor or President. 

He is a short man, between fifty and sixty, with 
close-cropped, grizzled hair, a grizzled imperial, 
and a fierce, grizzled moustache in perpetual 
danger of being burned by his cigarette. As a 
young man he was cook to his officers' mess, chiefly 
in Algiers, where he had a touch of sun, which 
accounts for a certain excitability and nervousness. 
(At a performance of "Biribi" at Antoine's Theatre 
he had to be led out, it was so true and he so over- 
wrought.) He would certainly have written poetry 
had his parents been rich. Trouble also he would 
as assuredly have plunged into; and indeed his 
life is not too smooth as it is, for he is terribly 
susceptible (those African sunstrokes !) and Ma- 
dame had to keep both eyes very wide open before 
she ceased to care. 

In his youth, before his Army period, he had 
been a valet in London, in Half-Moon Street, and 
though it was only for a few wrecks and he speaks 
no English, it brings him into touch with English 
people a little quicker; and after a glass or two, 
if he likes you and Madame is absent, he will tell 
you of how the only woman he ever really loved was 
the English girl that he met in London. But this 
vein is not to be encouraged, since it ends in tears. 

185 



Old Lamps for New 

For the most part he is a mocker — laughing and 
cynical — appraising everything and everybody in 
modern life with a French shrug or a French 
gesture, never wholly serious and never wholly 
thoughtless, hving in that busy, materialistic 
French way that makes such contented citizens and 
such an efficient nation and is yet the despair of 
every moralist in Tunbridge Wells. 

After a while the door opened, letting in an icy 
blast and a little woman in a plaid shawl. Her 
head was bare, her light brown hair being pulled 
back from the forehead in the French way. She 
had large diamond earrings, a pair of cold blue 
eyes capable of much surface mirth, and a shrewd 
calculating face. It was Madame. She sat down 
at once and began to talk, and talked on, cleverly, 
commandingly, till we left — cynical as her hus- 
band, but more alert. Her readiness was amazing. 
She took every point and added to it points of her 
own; while with every new customer that entered 
for a glass of coffee or cognac or an aperitif she had 
a sentence or two of greeting and jest, flung across 
to their tables — for in this land of France, where 
people talk little of the conduct of hfe, but live it 
industriously, every man who wants refreshment 
may have a seat for his comfort and a table on 
which to stand his glass, and may sit there as long 
as he wishes. 

How far (I thought as I sat there, while the 
i86 



A Glimpse of Civilization 

landlord and the landlady and my friend exchanged 
their badinage) is this removed from the "Red 
Lions" and "King's Heads" and "White Horses" 
of my native land, where landlords are plethoric 
and vinous, and landladies testy and not too clean, 
and barmaids vacuous and pert, and bars are 
crowded by horse-laughing loafers who know 
not when to stop ! How different ! And to what 
class of society in England would one have to go 
(I asked myself) for a similarly vivid banter and 
shrewd criticism of life? Certainly not to licensed 
victuallers, was the nearest reply I could frame. 



18/ 



Her Royal 'Tumnal Tintiness ^;:^ ^c:^ ^^ 

SHE is absurdly small — a homoeopathic dose 
of a dog. Nothing but the folly of Western 
fashions prevents her being carried in the sleeve, 
as Nature and Art intended her to be. But she 
is small only in figure : in all else she is as large 
as a Newfoundland — in fidelity and courage and 
spirit and protectiveness and appetite (proportion- 
ately), and love of ease — while in brain power she is 
larger. Although not six months old, she has the 
gravity of age, she suggests complete mental ma- 
turity. If she were ten she could not open an eye 
upon a superfluous caress with more languor or dis- 
dain. Her regality is such that one resorts to all 
kinds of expedients to win her favour. She has 
the more radiant merits of the cat — she eats like 
a cat, with all its meticulous cleanliness and pre- 
cision, she plays with a cotton-reel like a cat, she 
has a cat's flexibility in her toilet. On your knee 
she sinks into complacency like a cat. None the 
less she is a true dog too, with nearly all the stig- 
mata of her kind — the black muzzle, the deep 
stoop, the flat forehead, the plumed tail carried 
i88 



Her Royal 'Tumnal Tintiness 

high, the bowed legs, the minuteness, the nervous 
lluid. Her hue is that of a beech leaf in autumn. 

When she runs from room to room she beats the 
floor with her fore-paws with a gallant little rock- 
ing-horse action. When she runs over grass she 
makes a russet streak like a hare, with the undulat- 
ing ripple of a sea-serpent, and her soft pads re- 
verberate like muffled hoofs. When she is not 
running she is asleep. When she sleeps the most 
comfortable place in the room is hopelessly engaged 
until she wakes. However fast she may be sleep- 
ing, she wakes directly her particular friend leaves 
the room, her religion being sociability. Left 
alone she screams. Put out of the house alone, 
she circumnavigates it with the speed of thought, 
seeking an open door or window. The sunlight 
through her tongue is more than rubies. 

One difficulty that seems to confront many 
owners of Pekingese spaniels is the finding of a 
suitable name ; for it should of course be Chinese 
and also easily pronounceable. But to those who 
have the honour to possess Professor Giles's 
"Chinese Biographical Dictionary" the situation 
is without such complications. Turning over its 
pages I quickly alighted upon a choice of engag- 
ing females whose names might fitly be conferred 
upon Her Autumn Leafiness. To mention a few, 
there is A-chiao, who, when a child, was shown to 
the Emperor Wu Ti, also a child, and he was asked 



Old Lamps for New 

what he thought of her as a possible wife. "Oh," 
said the boy, "if I could get A-chiao I would have 
a golden house to keep her in." There is Chao 
Fei-yen, who was so graceful and light that she 
was called "Flying Swallow." There is Chao Yiin, 
who died with these words from the "Diamond 
Lutra" on her lips: "Like a dream, like a vision, 
like a bubble, like a shadow, Hke dew, like light- 
ning." There is Ch'i Nu, who had two lovers, one 
of which lived on the right of the house and the 
other on the left. Her father bade her tuck up the 
sleeve which corresponded to the man whom she 
preferred, and she tucked up both, saying that she 
would like to live with the handsome one and eat 
with the rich. (This dog is very hke that.) There 
is Feng Hou, one of the favourites of the Emperor 
Yuan Ti, who, when a bear escaped, did not iiee 
with all the other ladies, but remained to face the 
bear, saying: "I was afraid lest some harm should 
come to Your Majesty's person." There is Hsi 
Chih, who was never so lovely as when she knitted 
her brows ; and P'an Fei, the favourite of Hsiao 
Pao-chiian,. who said of her, "Every step makes a 
lily grow !" and Pei Ch'i Kung Chu, who awakened 
in the breast of her lover such a flame that it set 
fire to a temple; and Tao Yiin, who when her 
brother hkened a snow-storm to salt sprinkled in 
the air, corrected the feebleness of his simile by 
comparing it to willow-catkins whirled by the 
190 



Her Royal 'Tumnal Tintlness 

wind ; and Ts'ai Luan, who compiled a rhyming 
dictionary and ascended to heaven with her hus- 
band, each on a white tiger. — Here, you observe, 
is a considerable range — although by no means 
all — for the selecting mind to consider. 

The choice fell upon Feng Hou. That is the 
name to which, since it is hers and she is all caprice 
and individuahty, she refuses to answer. 

The dog will come when he is called, 
The cat will turn away, 

— SO wrote an old observer. It is true of dogs 
and cats, but it is hopelessly amiss of Pekingese. I 
would amend it thus : — 

The dog will come when he is called, 

The cat will turn away ; 
The Pekingese will please itself. 

Whatever you may say. 

For, to adapt an old proverb, where there's a 
Pekingese there's a will. 

I do not think that she is ever likely to be a 
wonder from the point of view of the bench. At 
least one of the dreaded penalizations is hers 
already, and she may acquire others; nothing can 
make her fit to sit beside her illustrious grand- 
father, Ch. Chu'erh of Alderbourne, that Napoleon 
of Pekingese, that Meredith, that Brummell, all 
combined ; nor has she the ingratiating pictorial 
charm of Ch. Broadoak Beetle; but no one knows 
191 



Old Lamps for New 

what her own children may be Hke, and mean- 
while she is enough for her owner. She has 
brought into a house hitherto unconscious of it 
the adorable piquancy of Peking. 

Having done all that was .possible to make 
Feng Hou our own, no one in the house having 
any independent will left, and butcher's-bills rising 
like Grahame White : having done all this, it was 
something more than a shock to be favoured with 
a translation of the rhapsodical pearls of wisdom 
dropped from the lips of her Imperial Majesty 
Tzu Hsi, the late Dowager Empress of Western 
China, for the guidance of the master of her 
kennel. One saw at once how much was still to 
do if Feng Hou was to be worthy of her race. 
I quote this most delightful document, the very 
flower of Chinese solicitude and fancy. 

Pearls Dropped from the Lips oe Her Imperial 

Majesty, Tzu Hsi, Dowager Empress of the 

Flowery Land 

Let the Lion Dog be small : let it wear the swelling cape of 
dignity around its neck : let it display the billowing standard of 
pomp above its back. 

Let its face be black : let its fore legs be shaggy : let its fore- 
head be straight and low, like unto the brow of an Imperial 
righteous harmony boxer. 

Let its eyes be large and luminous : let its ears be set like the 
sails of a war-junk : let its nose be like that of the monkey god 
of the Hindus. 

Let its fore legs be bent, so that it shall not desire to wander 
far, or leave the Imperial precincts. 

192 



Her Royal 'Tumnal Tintincss 

Let its body be shaped like tliat of a hunting Hon spying for 
its prey. 

Let its feet be tufted with plentiful hair that its footfall may 
be soundless: and for its standard of pomp let it rival the whisk. 
of the Tibetan's yak, which is flourished to protect the Imperial 
litter from the attacks of flying insects. 

Let it be lively that it may afford entertainment by its gambols; 
let it be timid that it may not involve itself in danger : let it be 
domestic in its habits that it may live in amity with the other 
bc'asts, fishes, or birds that find protection in the Imperial Palace. 
And for its colour, let it be that of the lion — a golden sable, to be 
carried in the sleeve of a yellow robe, or the colour of a red 
bear, or a black or a white bear, or striped like a dragon, so that 
there may be dogs appropriate to every costume in the Imperial 
wardrobe. 

Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine 
cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon. 

Let it comport itself with dignity ; let it learn to bite the for- 
eign devils instantly. 

Let it be dainty in its food that it shall be known for an Im- 
perial dog by its fastidiousness. 

Sharks' fins and curlews' livers and the breasts of quails, on 
these it may be fed ; and for drink give it the tea that is brewed 
from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province 
of the Hankow, or the milk of the antelopes that pasture in the 
Imperial parks. Thus shall it preserve its integrity and self- 
respect; and for the day of sickness let it be anointed with the 
clarified fat of the leg of a sacred leopard, and give it to drink a 
throstle's egg-shell full of the juice of the custard-apple in which 
have been dissolved three pinches of shredded rhinoceros horn, 
and apply to it piebald leeches. 

So shall it remain; but if it die, remember thou, too, art 
mortal." 

That is a very charming poem, is it not? Queen 
\'ictoria drew up no such rules for Dandie Din- 
monts, nor did Charles I, so far as I know, thus 
o 193 



Old Lamps for New 

establish the standard of the Httle creatures with 
whose ears he played instead of studying the signs 
of the times. But it must necessarily strike some 
apprehension into the breast of the owner of a 
Pekingese. Is one doing rightly by the dog? is a 
question that it forces upon one. In the matter of 
diet alone I find that we have been all to seek. 
No house could have been so free from sharks' fins 
and curlews' livers as this, and if a quail's breast has 
chanced to enter, it was certainly not Feng Hou 
who ate it. As for drink — but I wonder if any 
one can recommend me a good, trustworthy an- 
telope-milker: one who would not object to help in 
the garden when it is not milking- time ? Things 
would be simple then — until Feng Hou was ill. 
But that does not bear thinking about. 

Apropos of medicine, however, an odd thing 
happened. Feng Hou at first was not always good; 
indeed she was sometimes extremely naughty; 
and a little castigating seemed needful. A letter 
therefore was dispatched to London, to a provider 
of quaint necessaries, asking that some attractive 
little switch, worthy of such a creature, might be 
supplied. It came at once — the most delicate and 
radiant of rods, with a note saying that it was 
something of a curiosity, being pure rhinoceros 
horn. So we have one of the ingredients of one 
of the prescriptions after all ! Physic indeed. 



194 



Five Characters ^^^ ^^^ ^^ '*^^^ ''^^^ ''^^^ 
I. — The Kind Red Lioness 

I WILL admit that my head ached and I looked 
tired ; but I was not so depressed as all that. 
None the less she thought I was, and being a good 
soul she did what she could to help me, and since 
I knew her to be a good soul doing all that she 
could to help me, I had to acquiesce. 

''Let me bring you something to cheer you up," 
she said. ''Of course it's lonely staying in a country 
inn all by yourself. I know it must be. But I've 
got something that'll make you laugh. I'll fetch 
it in." 

I feared the worst as Mrs. Tally hastened away; 
and I knew the worst when she returned bearing 
the Visitors' Book. 

"There," she said, "I often have a good laugh 
over that of an evening. Such funny bits there 
are in it. Some of the gentlemen we get here are 
such wags. Look at this" — and she placed her 
fat finger on a drawing of a young man in a 
straw hat, leaning against the bar while he blew 
kisses to an enormous figure behind it. 

195 



Old Lamps for New 

"That's me," she said, pointing to the enormous 
figure. "I remember that young gentleman so 
well. He came with two others, on bicycles, and 
they stayed from Saturday to Monday. So bright 
they were, and so full of jokes. See what he 
wrote underneath." 

I read: "Dook Snook, Lord Bob, and the 
Hon. Billy came and saw and were conquered — 
to Tally!" 

"Do you see the take off in that last word?" she 
inquired. "Rather smart, wasn't it? But they're 
full of fun, all of them. Here's another amusing 
one. I remember that gentleman too. He was 
always full of his jokes." 

I looked and read: "I was sent to the Red 
Lion by my doctor for change and rest. The 
waitress got the change, and the hostess the rest." 

"Isn't that neat?" the Red Lioness inquired. 

I said it was. How could I dash this en- 
thusiast's spirit by telling her its age? 

"This is a bit of poetry," said my hostess, pro- 
ceeding to read it : — 

"Of all the gids that are so smart, 
There's none like Mrs. Tally, 
She is the darling of my heart, 
And lives in our alley. 

Signed x (Bill Bailey, his mark). 

"He was a jolly young fellow," she added. 

"Fancy calling himself Bill Bailey!" and she 

196 



Five Characters 

pealed merrily. ''I wonder what's become of 

him ; he hasn't been here for months," she added. 

"Here's some more poetry : — 

"There's nothing like a Lion that's Red 
For pleasant food and comfy bed. 
I mean to come and stay again, 
But now must run and catch my train. 
Algernon Mull, 

296, Broad Walk, Ealing. 

"Don't you think it's wonderful to be able to 
make up poytry like that?" Mrs. Tally con- 
tinued. "I do. I've tried, but I never could do 
anything worth repeating, and as for writing in 
a Visitors' Book ! . . . Don't you agree with 
me?" she asked. 

"Certainly," I said. "It's a real gift, there's 
no doubt about it. A gift." 

"Yes," she said, "a gift. That's what it is. 
Here's another funny one." 

I read: "The Ten Thirsty Tiddlers visited the 
old Red Lion for the fifteenth time. Everything 
Ai as usual." 

"But of course," said Mrs. Tally, "although 
these are amusing and make the book such good 
reading, it's the serious compKments we like the 
best. All comic wouldn't do at all. Some people, 
indeed, actually dislike it. There were two lady 
artists here not long ago who asked me to re- 
move the book from the room, as it was so vulgar. 
Fancy that — 'remove the book!' No, it's the 
197 



Old Lamps for New 

serious things that do us the most good, of course. 
Like this, for instance" — and Mrs. Tally pointed 
to the following, one after the other : — 

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Flower, of Dunedin, N.Z., spent a 
week here very pleasantly in July. The cooking was excellent 
and everything was most comfortable. They hope to return on 
their next visit to the dear old country. 

Comfortable rooms, good attendance, perfect cooking and 
the best of landladies. In short, a home from home. 

H. A. Martin, 
St. Swithin's, Sydenham, S.E. 

My daughter, Mrs. Crawley, and myself have spent a very 
agreeable week-end here and hope to come again. 
J. Murray Phipps, 
Member of the Committee of the Royal Musical Society. 

We have received every kindness from Mrs. Tally and her 
very efficient staff. 

Mr. and Mrs. J. Arbuthnot Gill, 

Wood Dene, Pinner. 

"Well," said Mrs. Tally, "I must go now; but 
I'll leave the book with you. And there's an 
earlier volume if you like to see it. It'll cheer you 
wonderfully, and you'll just die of laughing." 

The honest kindly soul ! There are moments 
when one is more ashamed of what is called cul- 
ture than any one can ever be of ignorance. 

II. — A Darling of the Gods 

I see by the papers, with deep concern, that 
my friend X has been run over by a motor-bus 
198 



Five Characters 

and killed, at the age of only thirty-eight. I wish 
I could find some one who helped to pick him up, 
just to see if he said anything about his end : 
because 

But I will tell you. His foible was to believe 
that everything that happened was for the best 
— for himself. Not for mankind ; he had none of 
the great Dr. Pangloss's satisfaction that every- 
thing that is is right, that this is the best of all 
possible worlds. None at all. But he was per- 
suaded that his own fortunes were being vigilantly 
and tirelessly watched by tutelary powers — that 
he was, in short, a pet of Fate. 

And in this creed he had grown very ingenious. 
I remember once hurrying with him to catch a 
train, which, he said, he must not lose at any 
cost. Well, after seriously injuring ourselves — or 
at least myself — by running with our heavy bags, 
we lost it. 

"Never mind," he said calmly, "I was evidently 
intended not to catch it." 

"Then why on earth did you drag me along at 
that infernal pace?" I asked. 

"Oh, well," he said, "one has to try; one does 
not know what the stars' game is."' 

"What do you think it is?" I inquired coldly. 

"I expect the train will meet with an accident; 
if so, we are well out of it." 

I took the trouble to find out, when we did at 
199 



Old Lamps for New 

last reach the London station, if that train had 
come safely in. 

"To the minute," said the porter. 

"There," I said to my friend, "what do you 
make of that?" 

"Oh," he replied, "I daresay some one with an 
infectious disease had been sitting in our compart- 
ment and we should have caught it." 

What are you to do with a man who talks like 
that ? 

Your ordinary fatalist who thinks that, every- 
thing being ordained and fixed, no effort of his 
own can matter, is bad enough; but the fataHst 
who is also an optimist and secure in the knowledge 
of his own prosperity is worse. And yet it was 
rather fine too. The hardest rebuff's (as I should 
call them) left him smiling. 

One day he lost a lot of money in an invest- 
ment. 

"That's very serious," I said. 

"Not so bad as it might have been," he replied. 
"It was done to teach me not to speculate. I 
am not naturally speculative; I was going against 
my genius when I did it. Now I have lost £500. 
But if I hadn't I might have lost £5000 later on." 

I looked at him in amazement. A kind of in- 
verted Christianity was at work had he only known 
it. But he prided himself on his pagaflism. 

Well, now he is dead and can find no extenuat- 



Five Characters 

ing circumstances; but I have no doubt he would 
have explained the catastrophe perfectly, had it 
been anything short of fatal. 

"I was getting very cheap," he would probably 
have said, "and needed rest. I could not have 
got it naturally, being far too busy ; so this accident 
was sent to keep me in bed for a couple of months 
and pull me clean round." 

But it is hard when the protective stars suffer 
from trop de zele. 

III. — The Nut 

He seemed to be an old habitue of the music- 
hall, for without a programme he had known all 
that was coming. And then suddenly he came to 
his own; for, "Watch this," he said to those of us 
who were near him, strangers though we were, as 
a new number went up; "this is good. I know 
a chap in this. I'll tell you when he comes on." 
We watched and waited. It was a furious knock- 
about sketch, the scene of which was a grocer's 
shop, staffed by comic grocers. Humorist after 
humorist came upon the stage, fell over each other, 
and went through the usual antics; but there was 
no news of our friend's friend, nor was the play 
good. 

And then at last a young man representing an 
aristocratic customer rushed on. "That's him," 
said the man, "that's old Charley. He's a nut, I 

20I 



Old Lamps for New 

can tell you." (A nut is what we used to call a 
"dog," with a touch more of irresponsibility and 
high-spirited idiocy.) 

"Isn't he a nut?" he asked us all with a 
radiant sweeping glance of inquiry. How could 
we disappoint him? I caught myself nodding in 
agreement. A nut, surely. "Oh, he's a boy, I 
promise you. I've had some rare times with old 
Charley," his friend went on. "You should see him 
at Forest Gate on Sundays ! I tell you he's a nut." 

The nut continued to do his best to prove his 
character. He screwed an eyeglass in his eye, he 
dashed the girls under the chin, he fell over his 
walking-stick, he flung his tall hat on the ground. 
His friend was in esctasies. "Good old Charley!" 
he cried again; "isn't he a nut? By Jingo, but 
he's a nut !" 

I left him exulting in his intimacy with Charley, 
while the youths round him glowed in the glory of 
even the temporary acquaintance of a man who 
knew intimately a nut on the music-hall stage. 

And, after all, that is no small thing. 

IV. — The Master of the New Suburb 

" The Nook:' Is Mr. Jupp in ? 

Mrs. Jupp. No, lady, I can't say as he's in just 
at the moment, but I daresay I could find him. 
He's very likely at "The Limes," or "Bellaggio," 
or up at our other garden. 
202 



Five Characters 

"r//e Nook.'' I want to see him very particularly. 
It's about my garden. I live at "The Nook," you 
know, and I want Mr. Jupp to come to me regularly. 

Mrs. Jupp. Yes, lady; but I think you'd better 
sec Jupp yourself. I'll go and find him if you'll 
take a chair. 

"The Nook." But I could go perfectly well. 
Both those houses are on my way back. 

Mrs. Jtipp. Oh no, lady ; you sit down ; I'll 
fetch him. 

[Mrs. Jupp fetches Jupp /rom "The Green Man.''] 

"The Nook." Oh! Mr. Jupp, I want you to 
come to my garden every Friday. What do you 
charge for that? 

Mr. Jupp. Fridays, mum, I'm engaged at "Belly- 
vista." 

"The Nook." Then Wednesdays. 

Mr. Jupp. Wednesdays, mum, I go to "The 
Red Bungalow." 

"The Nook." All day? 

Mr. Jupp. Yes, mum, all day. By rights I 
ought to be there all the week, there's that work 
to be done. 

''The Nook." Mondays, then? Are you engaged 
on Mondays ? 

Mr. Jupp. Yes, mum ; on Mondays I belongs to 
"Sans Souci." 

"The Nook." But this is Monday. Why aren't 
you there now? 

203 



Old Lamps for New 

Mr. Jupp. I am, mum. This is my tea-time, 

^^The Nook.'' Couldn't you give me your tea- 
times? You shall have tea — anything you like — 
in the garden, and if you gave me that hour every 
evening all through the week I daresay it would 
do. 

Mr. Jupp. What, mum, work all through my 
tea-time ! 

'^The Nook.'" I should pay you for it, of course. 
And really you're much better without tea. You'll 
enjoy your supper all the more, you know. 
Wouldn't he, Mrs. Jupp? 

Mrs. Jupp. Oh ! I never interfere with Jupp's 
affairs. Jupp must answer for himself. 

''The Nook.'' Well, then, Mr. Jupp, couldn't 
you give me an hour in the early morning before 
you start at the other houses ? 

Mr. Jupp. What about my own garden, mum? 
When am I going to do that? 

''The Nook." Of course I should pay you well 
for coming then. 

Mr. Jupp. What were you thinking of giving, 
mum? 

'^The Nook." Well, I would give you eightpence 
an hour — that's four shillings a week. Will you 
come ? Are there no other gardeners here ? 

Mr. Jupp. No, mum, no one; and even if there 
was, he wouldn't be any use. He wouldn't under- 
stand the soil. It's very curious soil about here. 
204 



Five Characters 

''TJic Nook:' Well, will you come? 

Mr. J up p. I'll let you know, mum. I'll think 
about it and let you know. There's so many after 
me I have to be careful, mum. But I'll let you 
know. 

'^The Nook:' Can't you decide now? I'll give 
you tenpence an hour. 

Mr. Jitpp. I'll let you know, mum. 

[Exit ''The Nook'' ; enter ''La Hacienda:'] 

"La Hacienda:' Is Mr. Jupp in ? 

Mrs. Jupp. No, sir. I can't say he's in just at 
the moment, but he's not far away. 

"La Hacienda:' Where do you think he is? 

Mrs. Jupp. Well, he might be at "Sans Souci," 
and he might be at "Bellyvista," or up at our other 
garden, perhaps. You see, being the only gardener 
about here, he's so much in request. If you'll take 
a seat I'll fetch him. 

[She fetches Jvpf from "The Green Man:'] 

"La Hacienda:' Mr. Jupp, I want to arrange 
with you about my garden. What day will suit 
you best ? 

Mr. Jupp. I don't know, sir, as I've got any day. 

"La Hacienda:' You don't mean to say you're 
full up ? The whole week ? 

Mr. Jupp. I might be able to squeeze in an hour 

here and there. Suppose — I only say suppose, 

mind — I was to come for an hour every morning 

before I started in regular at my day's work, wher- 

205 



Old Lamps for New 

ever it might be — at ''The Nook," or "Belly- 
vista," or "Sans Souci," or "The Red Bungalow," 
or "The Corner House," or wherever it was? 
Although, of course, I ought to be in my own 
garden then, as the missus here well knows. 
What would it be worth your while to give me ? 

"Za Hacienda. ^^ For an hour every morning 
early ? 

Mr. Jupp. Yes, sir, time I ought to be giving to 
my own garden. 

"La Hacienda.^' Well, as it's important, and 
you seem to be the only jobbing gardener about 
here 

Mr. Jupp. No, sir, there's no other, and even 
if there was, he wouldn't be any good. He 
wouldn't understand the soil. It's very curious 
soil about here. It's a matter of a lifetime to 
learn it. 

"La Hacienda.'" Well, I wouldn't mind as much 
as a shilling an hour, at any rate at first. Would 
that do? 

Mr. Jupp. Well, I'll think about it, and let you 
know, sir. I can't decide anything till I've seen 
the gentleman at "The Trossachs." He has the 
first claim on any of my spare time, such as it is; 
but I'll let you know. 

[Exit "La Hacienda^' ; enter "The Cedars,'* 
on a similar errand.] 



206 



Five Characters 

V. — The Second Fiddle 

*'He is tall and thin; a Jew, of course. They 
are always Jews. He has a large hook nose such 
as I detest and a black moustache. He dresses 
very carefully, but it is cheap stuff; still, it looks 
smart, and women are so foolish. His hair is not 
long, for he wishes to be thought a man of the 
world as well as a m.usician. But I must confess 
he plays well, so far as technique goes, though he 
never feels it. 

''His eyes are fat, and he has learned to roll 
them and close them rapturously, and Hft his eye- 
brows, and now and then he sways his head and 
seems to be in a dream of beauty. That's all trick, 
and very likely he practises it before the glass, for 
he has no music in his soul really, and he is al- 
ways scheming. Even while his eyes appear to be 
closed in ecstasy he is looking under the lids at 
the women to scq which is the best worth culti- 
vating. 

"I, too, adore women, although I am afraid of 
them, and I am so lonely I don't mind confessing 
that once I too sat before the looking-glass and 
tried to make languishing faces like his; but I 
suddenly realized what I was doing and was ready 
to disfigure myself for shame. Yet they are so 
charming, some of the women here, and it would 
be so delightful to play on their feelings as he can 
207 



Old Lamps for New 

and make them open their lips just a httle and 
look away into nothing; above all to make them 
want me. 

"Why one man playing a piece can do that and 
another man playing the same piece much better 
with real feeling cannot is a mystery. And I 
would be so nice to them. They would be able 
to trust me. I would give them such good ad- 
vice and take such care of them. 

"Instead, the women who come here, many of 
them, come only to watch Jiim. They make their 
men bring them here, and often they forget to 
eat. Then the men they are with are furious. I 
have heard them sometimes at the nearest tables to 
the orchestra. 'Why can't you let that damned 
fiddler alone,' I have heard them say — every one 
talks the same in our restaurant — ' and pay a 
little attention to me?' And then the women 
are cross, and the meal is ruined. 

"But when he goes off — as he does after every 
two or three selections — to sit with a friend or 
receive congratulations from the visitors who call 
him to their tables, and I have to take his place 
and lead the orchestra, then the men's faces clear 
again, for they know that no woman will ever look 
at me or forget her food when I am playing a 
solo, for I am short and fair. It is no use being 
short and fair. I can play all that he does, and 
I love it too, which he does not — but it is useless. 
208 



Five Characters 

No one looks at me twice. I am short and fair, 
and middle-aged too. 

"But even when I was younger and better 
dressed and didn't care I never could get women 
to be interested in me. It is some trick, I suppose. 
He takes them all in; but I could tell them some 
things about him if I were asked — how mean he 
is, how vain, how jealous, how fickle. 

"He is cruel too. When our poor pianist had 
pneumonia through playing for him one night in a 
cold hall he refused to allow him any money till 
he was well enough to play again. Five weeks. 
Not a penny. And the second viohn, whose place 
I took, was discharged only because he was ap- 
plauded too much in the solos. One who really 
needed the post too. A poor man with a large 
family. 

"But women don't mind about things like that. 
They don't ask a man to be kind and good, espe- 
cially if he plays well. And I confess that his play- 
ing is wonderful — technically. But no heart at all. 

"Notes are continually being brought to him 
by the waiters. Sometimes they merely ask for 
certain things to be played, always waltzes or love 
songs, and sometimes they are more personal. And 
while we are playing a piece which one of the 
pretty women has asked for he is looking at her 
and making his faces and closing his eyes until 
she feels Hke a queen. Isn't it strange? They 
p 209 



Old Lamps for New 

should see him when we rehearse. He doesn't 
smile then. He snaps and snarls. 

"'Ah!' say I to myself as I watch it all 
through my spectacles, 'you should see his wife 
waiting outside the restaurant to waylay him on 
his way to his cards and get some money. He 
wanted her /)nce, before she was tired and plain. 
Now he only wants new faces and new voices and 
new admiration.' That's what I am saying behind 
my spectacles, but no one knows it. There's no 
telepathy, as you call it, in me. I am short and fair. 
We who are short and fair are without magnet- 
ism. All there is for us is to be true; but women 
don't mind about that. They want magnetism. 

"It is difhcult for me, being in his employ and 
being so unimportant, to help much, but sometimes 
when I see a really nice girl — and we have a few 
here — losing her head I try quite hard. I try to 
catch her eye and indicate my real opinion of him 
grimacing there. Of course, I can only frown and 
nod. What else could I do? I couldn't go down 
and speak to her; but I try very hard with my ex- 
pression. 

"Once when he was making love to a new book- 
keeper girl I was able really to act. I told her 
to be careful. She was a good girl, but oh so silly, 
as girls can be with musicians. All musicians, 
that is, but me and the fat 'cellist. She replied 
that what I said might be true but she liked him all 



Five Characters 

the same. She took people as she found them, she 
said, and he was always very nice and kind to her. 

"'If you want a lover,' I said, 'let me be your 
lover. I have no one to love ; he has thousands.' 
But she only laughed. 'There's some fun in tak- 
ing a man from thousands,' she said. That's what 
women are. I don't want to wdn a girl from thou- 
sands of men. I just want her or I don't want 
her. But women — at any rate the women who 
come here — are different. 

"Well, she w-ouldn't hsten, but she w^as a good 
girl, and true to me, for she didn't tell him what I 
said, although I couldn't bring myself to ask her 
not to. But she was honourable and didn't tell 
him. And so it went on; he smiling and bowing 
and playing to the w^omen all day, at lunch and 
dinner, and going to tea with them in between, or 
playing cards with his little set of friends, and at 
night the bookkeeper girl waiting for him. And 
so it went on for a month, and then he grew tired 
and left her, and she lost her place here; and if 
she has any money now it is that which I have 
lent her to get through her trouble with. 

"So you see what sort of a man he is. But that 
he can play I will admit. He has a wonderful 
touch, and a beautiful instrument worth a great 
deal of money. He could earn a large salary in any 
orchestra in the world. But there is no heart in his 
playing. He does not love music as one should," 
211 



Without Souls -^^^ ^^^^y '*^:> ^^ ^^:> ^=^ 

I. — The Builders 



Mrs. Thrush. What do you think of that haw- 
thorn ? 

Mr. Thrush. Oh, no, my dear, no; much too 
isolated, it would attract attention at once. I can 
hear the boys on a Sunday afternoon — "Hullo, 
there's a tree that's bound to have a nest in it." 
And then where are you? You know what boys 
are on a Sunday afternoon? You remember that 
from last year, when we lost the finest clutch of 
eggs in the county. 

Mrs. Thrush. Stop, stop, dear, I can't bear it. 
Why do you remind me of it? 

Mr. Thrush. There, there, compose yourself, 
my pretty. What other suggestions have you? 

Mrs. Thrush. One of the laurels, then, in the 
shrubbery at the Great House. 

Mr. Thrush. Much better. But the trouble 
there is the cat. 

Mrs. Thrush. Oh, dear, I wish yot4-^d find a 
place without me; I assure you (blushing) it's time. 

212 



Without Souls 

}fr. Thrush. Well, my notion, as I have said 
all along, is that there's nothing to beat the very 
middle of a big bramble. I don't mind whether 
it's in the hedge or whether it's on the common. 
But it must be the very middle. It doesn't matter 
very much then whether it's seen or not, because 
no one can reach it. 

Mrs. Thrush. \'ery well, then, be it so; but do 
hurry with the building, there's a dear. 



n 



Mr. Tree-Creeper. I've had the most extraordi- 
nary luck. Listen. You know that farmhouse by 
the pond. Well, there's a cow-shed with a door 
that won't shut, and even if it would, it's got a 
hole in it, and in the roof, at the very top, there's 
a hollow. It's the most perfect place you ever 
saw, because, even if the farmer twigged us, he 
couldn't get at the nest without pulling off a lot 
of tiles. Do you see ? 

Mrs. Tree-Creeper. It sounds perfect. 

Mr. Tree-Creeper. Yes, but it's no use waiting 
here. We must collar it at once. There were a 
lot of prying birds all about when I was there, and 
I noticed a particularly nosey flycatcher watch- 
ing me all the time. Come along quick; and 
you'd better bring a piece of hay with you to look 
like business. 

213 



Old Lamps for New 
III 

Mr. Wren. Well, darling, what shall it be this 
year — one of those boxes at "The Firs," or the 
letter-box at "Meadow View," where the open- 
air journaKst lives, or shall we build for ourselves 
like honest wrens? 

Mrs. Wren. I leave it to you, dearest. Just as 
you wish. 

Mr. Wren. No, I want your help, I'll just give 
you the pros and cons. 

Mrs. Wren. Yes, dear, do; you're so clear- 
headed. 

Mr. Wren. Listen then. If we use the nest- 
box there's nothing to do, no fag of building, but 
we have to put up with visitors peeping in every 
day and pawing the eggs or the kids about. If we 
use the letter-box we shall have to line it, and 
there will be some of the same human fussiness to 
endure; but on the other hand, we shall become 
famous — we shall get into the papers. Don't you 
see the heading, "Remarkable Nest in Surrey"? 
And then it will go on, "A pair of wrens have 
chosen a strange abode in which to rear their little 
fluffy brood " and so forth. 

Mrs. Wren. That's rather delightful, all the 
same. 

Mr. Wren. Finally, there is the nest which we 
build ourselves, running just the ordinary risks of 
214 



Without Souls 

boys and ornithologists, but feeling at any rate 
that we are independent. What do you say? 

Mrs. Wren. Well, dearest, I think I say the 
last. 

Mr. Wren. Good. Spoken hke a brave hen. 
Then let's look about for a site at once. 

IV 

Mr. Swallow. I've looked at every house with 
decent eaves in the whole place until I'm ready 
to drop. 

Mrs. Swallow. What do you think about it? 

Mr. Swallow. Well, it's a puzzle. There's the 
Manor House : I began with that. There is good 
holding there, but the pond is a long way off, and 
carrying mud so far would be a fearful grind. 
None the less it's a well-built house, and I feel 
sure we shouldn't be disturbed. 

Mrs. Swallow. What about the people ? 

Mr. Swallow. How funny you are about the 
people always ! Never mind. All I can find out 
is that there's the squire and his wife and a com- 
panion. 

Mrs. Swallow. No children? 

Mr. Swallow. None. 

Mrs. Swallow. Then I don't care for the Manor 
House. Tell me of another. 

Mr. Swallow. This is the merest sentiment; but 
no matter. The Vicarage next. 

215 



Old Lamps for New 

Mrs. Swallow. Any children there ? 

Mr. Swallow. No, but it's much nearer the pond. 

Mrs. Swallow. And the next ? 

Mr. Swallow. The farmhouse. A beautiful place 
with a pond at your very door. Everything you 
require, and lots of company. Good sheltered eaves, 
too. 

Mrs. Swallow. Any children ? 

Mr. Swallow. Yes, one little girl. 

Mrs. Swallow. Isn't there any house with babies? 

Mr. Swallow. Only one that could possibly be 
any use to us; but it's a miserably poor place. 
No style. 

Mrs. Swallow. How many babies ? 

Mr. Swallow. Twins, just born, and others of 
one and two and three. 

Mrs. Swallow. We'll build there. 

Mr. Swallow. They'll make a horrible row all 
night. 

Mrs. Swallow. We'll build there. 

II. — Bush's Grievance 

I am very happy for the most part. I have 
perfect health and a good appetite, and They are 
very good to me here: let me worry them at 
meals, and toss me little bits — chiefly bread and 
toast, I admit, but nice bread and nice toast; and 
though He spends far too much time indoors with 
books and things, and She doesn't go for walks, 
216 



Without Souls 

and the puppy-girl has a dog of her own, and 
doesn't want me (nor do I want her), yet I 
manage pretty well, for there is a boy who often 
goes to the village, through the rabbit fields, and 
takes me with him, and there is a big house near 
by where the servants throw away quite large 
bones only half-scraped. Either they are extrava- 
gant or they don't make that horrid watery stuff, 
the ruination of good bones, which My People 
here will begin their dinner with. 

So you see I don't do badly; and, though now 
and then I have to be whacked, still it doesn't 
hurt much, and He only half knows how to do it; 
while as for Her (when He's away). She's just 
useless. 

But my grievance, you say? Oh, yes, I have 
one grievance, and talking it over with other dogs, 
particularly spaniels (like me), I find that it's a 
very common one. My grievance is the game they 
will play instead of going for a walk. In winter 
it's all right, They walk then ; but in summer They 
will play this game. I can't make head or tail of 
it myself, but They simply adore it. It is played 
with four balls — blue and red and black and yellow 
— and hoops. First one of Them hits a ball, and 
then the other. It goes on for ever. I do all I 
can to show Them what I think of it: I lie down 
just in front of the player; sometimes I even stop 
the balls completely; but They don't take the 
217 



Old Lamps for New 

hint : They just shout at me or prod me with the 
mallet. 

That's my grievance. Of course it was pretty 
bad when They got a dog for the httle puppy- 
girl, especially as it is not a breed I care for; but 
that I can stand. It's this wretched monopolizing 
game that I can't stand. I hate it. 

III. — A London Landmark 

I am the biggest of the elephants — the one that 
keeps on nodding its head. Why I do that I'll 
tell you later. The habit began some years ago. 
You see, I am getting on. I have been here ever 
since 1876, and that's a long time. I was think- 
ing the other day of all the things that have 
happened since I moved to Regent's Park from 
Ceylon, and really it is wonderful. For I hear 
what's going on. In between remarks about how 
big I am, and how restless I am, and what a wicked 
little eye I've got, the people say all kinds of 
things about the events of the day. Last Sunday 
I heard all about the Suffragettes, for instance. 
There wasn't much talk about Suffragettes in 1876. 

I read what's going on too. Now and then 
some one drops a paper or I borrow the keeper's. 
It took me a long time to learn to read, but I know 
now. I began with the notices about pickpockets, 
which are everywhere in these Gardens. That's an 
old thing, isn't it ? We four-footed creatures, whom 
218 



Without Souls 

you all come lo stare at and patronize, at any rate 
have no pockets to pick, and therefore are spared 
one of your weaknesses. (Except of course the 
kangaroo.) I mastered the pickpocket notice first, 
and then I learned the meaning of the one about 
smoking in my house. And so by degrees I knew 
it all, and it's now quite simple. I can read any- 
thing. I wish the people who came here could 
read as well. It says as plain as can be on my 
little door-plate thing, in front of the railings, that 
I am — that I am a lady — but how many visitors 
do you suppose refer to me as "she" or "her"? 
Not more than three out of the hundred. I count 
sometimes, just for fun. That's really why I nod: 
I'm counting. "Isn't he enormous?" they say. 
"Look at his funny Httle eye?" "Would you like 
to give him a bun, dearie?" and so on. And all 
the time, if only education were properly managed 
in this country, they could read my sex. It's on 
the board all right. 

I have been here longer than any one except 
the hippopotamus, which was born here in 1872. 
But to be born here is dull. I had six years of 
Ceylon first; I am a traveller. Supposing that I 
got away I should know what to do; but that old 
hippo wouldn't. Homekeeping hippos have ever 
homely wits, as the proverb has it. 

Do you know that in 1876 Winston was only two 
years old? Think of it. He used to be brought. 
219 



Old Lamps for New 

to see me when he was a tiny toddle with quite a 
small head. I've given him many a ride on my 
back. I often wonder what is the future of the 
children who put buns in my trunk and ride on 
my back, but this is the only one I can remember 
who got into office so young. 

It's an old place, the Zoo. Such queer creatures 
come and look at me, — lean, eager naturalists, 
lovers, uncles with small nephews, funny men try- 
ing to think of jokes about me. I like the Bank 
Holidays the best. There's some pleasure in 
astonishing simple people; and I like Sundays 
the least because the clever ones come then. 
Schoolmasters are the worst, because they lecture 
on me. My keeper hates them too, because they 
ask such lots of questions and never give any tips. 
There's a fearful desire to know how heavy I am. 
What does that matter? "My word, I wouldn't 
like him {him, of course) to tread on my favourite 
corn !" — I wonder how often I've heard that joke. 
The English make all their jokes again. They 
say things, too, about my trunk — packing it up 
and so on — till I could die of sheer ennui. 



220 



The Interviewer's Bag ^^> <:> -^;:> -^^^ 

I. — The Autographer 

HE was sitting forlornly on the shore at 
Swanage, toying with an open knife. 
Fearing that he might be about to do himself a 
mischief, I stopped and spoke. 

"No," he said, "I'm not contemplating suicide. 
Don't think that. I'm merely pondering on the 
illusion that England is the abode of freedom." 

"But isn't it?" I asked. 

He laughed bitterly. 

"What's wrong?" I said. 

He jerked his thumb towards the stone globe 
which is to Swanage what Thorwaldsen's Lion is 
to Lucerne, or the Sphinx to the desert. 

"Well?" I said. 

"Have you seen the tablets?" he asked. 

"No," I said. 

"They've put up two tablets," he explained, 
"with a request that any one wishing to cut or 
write his name should do it there rather than on 
the globe." 

"Very sensible," I said. 

"Sensible?" he echoed. "Sensible? But what's 

221 



Old Lamps for New 

the use of cutting your name on a place set 
apart for the purpose? There's no fun in that. 
Things are coming to a pretty pass when Town 
Councils take to sarcasm. Because that's what it 
is," he continued. "Sarcasm. They don't want 
our names anywhere, and this is their way of say- 
ing so. Sarcasm has been described," he went on, 
"as 'the language of the devil' ; and it's true." 

"But why do you want to cut your name?" I 
asked. 

He opened his eyes to their widest. "Why? 
What's the use of going anywhere if you don't?" 
he retorted. "You'll find my name all over Eng- 
land — on trees at Burnham Beeches, on windows 
at Chatsworth, on stone walls at Kenilworth, on 
whitewash at Stratford-on-Avon, in the turf of 
Chanctonbury. You'll find it in belfries and on 
seats. I should be ashamed of myself if I didn't 
inscribe it — and permanently, too. But this is too 
much for me. I came here only because I heard 
about the stone globe; and then to find those 
tablets ! But I haven't wasted my time," he con- 
tinued. "I went over to the New Forest the other 
day, and to-morrow I'm going to Stonehenge." 

"That's no good," I said. 

*'No good? Why, I've bought a new chisel on 
purpose for it. I'm told the stone's very hard." 

"You won't be able to do it," I said. "It's en- 
closed now, and guarded." 

222 



The Interviewer's Bag 

He buried his face in his hands. "Everything's 
against me," he groaned. "The country's going 
to the dogs." 

II. — The Equalizer 

IVIy friend was talking about the difficulty of get- 
ting level with life : with the people who charge 
too much, and with bad management generally; 
the subject having been started by a long wait 
outside the junction, which made our train half 
an hour late. 

"How," my friend had said, "are we ever go- 
ing to get back the value of this half-hour? My 
time is worth two guineas an hour; and I have 
now lost a guinea. How am I to be recouped? 
The railway company takes my money for a train 
which they say will do the journey between 11.15 
and 12.6, and I make my plans accordingly. It 
does not get in till 12.36, and all my plans are 
thrown out. Is it fair that I am not recompensed? 
Of course not. They have robbed me. How am 
I to get equal with them?" 

So he rattled on, and the little cunning eyes 
opposite us became more cunning and glittering. 

After my friend had left, the little man spoke 
to me. 

"Why didn't he take something?" he asked. 

"What do you mean ?" I said. 

"Something from the carriage, to help to make 
223 



Old Lamps for New 

up?" he said. "The window strap for a strop, 
for instance? It's not worth a guinea, of course, 
but it's something, and it would annoy the com- 
pany." 

"But he wasn't as serious as that," I said. 

"Oh, he's one of them that talks but doesn't 
act. I've no patience with them. I always get 
some, if not all, of my money back." 

"How?" I asked. 

"Well, suppose it's a restaurant, where I have 
to wait a long time and then get only poor food. 
I calculate to what extent I've been swindled and 
act accordingly. A spoon or two, or possibly a 
knife, will make it right. I am scrupulously 
honest about it." He drew himself up proudly. 

"If it's a theatre," he went on, "and I con- 
sider my time has been wasted, I take the opera- 
glasses home with me. You know those in the 
sixpenny boxes; I've got opera-glasses at home 
from nearly every theatre in London." 

"No!" I said. 

"Really," he replied, "I'm not joking. I 
never joke. You tell your friend when you see 
him next. Perhaps it will make him more rea- 
sonable." 

III. — A Hardy Annual 

"You look very tired," I said. 
"Yes," he replied, with a sigh. It was at the 
224 



The Interviewer's Bag 

private view of the Academy. ''But I shall get 
some rest now. It is all over for a while." 

"What is over?" I asked. 

''My work," he said. "It does not begin again 
with any seriousness till next February; but it 
goes on then till April with terrific vigour." He 
pressed his hand to his brow. 

"May I know what it is ?" I inquired. 

"Of course," he said. "I name pictures for the 
Exhibitions. The catalogues are full of my work. 
Here, for example, is one of my most effective titles: 
'Cold Hows the Winter river.' Not bad, is it?" 

I murmured something. 

"Oh, I know what you're thinking," he repHed. 
"You're thinking that it is so simple that the 
artist could have done it himself without my assist- 
ance. But there you're mistaken. They can't, 
not artists. They can just paint a picture — some 
of them — and that's all. You've no idea . . . 
Well, well." 

"Really?" I said. 

"Yes," he continued; "it's so. Now turn on. 
Here's another of mine. 'It was the Time of 
Roses.' That sounds easy, no doubt; but, mark 
you, you have not only to know it — to have read 
Hood — but — and this is the secret of my success 
— to remember it at the right moment." He 
almost glittered with pride. "Turn on," he said. 
'"East and West.' That's a subtle thing. Why 

Q 225 



Old Lamps for New 

'East and West'? you say. And then you see it's 
an English girl — the West — holding a Japanese fan 
— the East. But I'm not often as tricky as that. 
A line of poetry is always best; or a good descrip- 
tive phrase, such as 'Rivals,' 'Awaiting Spring's 
Return,' 'The Forest Perilous,' 'When Nature 
Sleeps,' 'The Coming Storm,' 'Sunshine and 
Shadow,' 'Waiting,' 'The Farmer's Daughter,' 
'A Haunt of Ancient Peace.'" 

He paused and looked at me. 

"They all sound fairly automatic," he went on; 
"but that's a blind. They want doing. You 
know the saying, 'Hard writing makes easy read- 
ing ' ; well, it's the same with naming titles. You 
think it's nothing; but that's only because it 
means real work. I don't know how to explain the 
gift — uncanny, no doubt. Kind friends have called 
it genius. But there it is." 

"I hope the financial results are proportionate," 
I said. 

"Ah," he repHed, "not alwaj^s. But how could 
they be? It's not only the expense of getting to 
the studios — taxis, and so forth — but the mental 
wear and tear. Still, I manage to hve." 

IV. — Another of Our Conquerors 

I used to think that the office-boy did those 
things. But no; it seems that it is an industry, 
and a very important one. 
226 



The Interviewer's Bag 

I made the discovery at a station, where the 
horrible and irritating word "Phast-phix" on 
the picture of a gum bottle held the reluctant 
eye. 

A sleek little man in a frock-coat and a tall hat, 
who had evidently breakfasted on cloves, paused 
beside me. 

**You might not think it," he said, "to look at 
me ; but that word that you are obviously admiring 
so naturally — and I may say so justly — originated 
with me. I invented it." 

"Why?" I asked. "Surely there are other 
things to do." 

He seemed pained and perplexed. 

"It is my business," he said. "That's what 
I do. I have an office ; I am well known. All 
the best firms apply to me. For example," he 
went on, "suppose you were to bring out a fluid 
mutton " 

"Heaven forbid !" I cried. 

"Yes, but suppose you were to," he continued, 
"and you wanted a nam_e for it, you would come 
to me." 

"Why shouldn't I think of one myself?" I 
asked. 

"You!" he cried. "How could you? It's a 
special equipment. Just try and you'll see. What 
would you call it?" 

"Well," I said after a moment's thought, I 
227 



Old Lamps for New 

might call it — I might call it Hang it, I 

wouldn't do such a thing, anyway." 

"There," he cried triumphantly, "I knew it. 
You would be lost. You would therefore come to 
me. I should charge you ten guineas, but in re- 
turn you would have a name that would make your 
fortune. " 

"What would that be?" I ventured to ask. 

"Oh, I don't know," he said, "for certain. 
'Sheep-0,' perhaps. But anyway it would be a 
good name. * Flock-vim,' perhaps. Or even 
'Mut-force.'" 

I began to long for my train. 

"How do you think of such things?" I inquired. 
"Tell me your processes." 

He laughed deprecatingly. "I have given the 
subject an immense deal of thought," he said. 
" For many years now I have done little else ; I 
am always on the look-out for ideas. They come 
to me at all kinds of odd times and in all 
kinds of odd places. In bed — on a 'bus — in the 
train." 

"This one?" I asked. 

"'Phast-phix'?" he replied. "Oh, I thought 
of that instantaneously. You see, the firm came 
to my ofhce to say they were putting a new gum 
or cement on the market, and they must have a 
good name for it at once. I had no time. I 
buried my head in my hands, for a few seconds 
228 



The Interviewer's Bag 

(my regular habit) and suddenly 'Phast-phix' 
flashed into it. They were enchanted." 

"I notice," I said, '*a tendency among ad- 
vertisers to transform 'f into 'ph.'" 

"Yes," he said, "they got it from me. I was 
the first. It is far more striking, don't you think? 
To spell 'fast-fix' correctly wouldn't be witty at 
all." 

I agreed with him. 

"Tell me some more of your special inspira- 
tions," I said. "Have you done anything lately 
as good as ' Phast-phix ' ? But no, how could 
you?" 

"Let me see," he remarked. "Yes, there is 
the name for the new pen. They came to me in 
a great hurry for that, too. But as it happened 
I had that carefully pigeon-holed, for I am always 
inventing names against a rainy day. I gave it 
to them at once — the 'Ri-teezi.' You have no 
doubt seen it advertised." 

(Haven't I ?) 

"That has been an immense success," he went 
on. "It's not a bad pen, either; but the name! 
Ah!" 

"Anything else out of the way?" I asked. 

"Yes," he said. "I was just going to tell you. 

I was approached by a firm with new blacking. 

All it required was an absolutely knock-out name. 

I gave them one, and only yesterday I had a visit 

229 



Old Lamps for New 

from the Secretary of the Company, who was 
present at the Board meeting when my letter was 
read out. He says that the thrill that ran through 
the directors — sober business men, mind you — 
at that moment was an epoch in the history of 
commerce." 

"Indeed," I remarked; "and what was the 
name?" 

"The name?" he said. "Ah, yes. It was one 
of my best efforts, I think. Simple, forcible, in- 
stantaneous in its message and unforgettable in 
form — 'Shine-0.'" 

"Yes," I said, "that should be hard to beat. 
I congratulate you." And so we parted. 

I wonder if there's really any money in that 
fluid-mutton idea. 

V. — A Case for Loyola 

We had no introduction save the circumstance 
that we chanced both to be taking refreshment at 
the same time — and, after all, is not that a bond? 
He did not begin to talk at once, and very likely 
would not have done so had not a little man come 
hastily in, received his drink, laid his money on 
the bar without a word, also without a word con- 
sumed it, and hurried out again. 

"You might guess a hundred times before you 
could say .what that man does," said my neigh- 
bour. 

230 



The Interviewer's Bag 

I gave it up at once. He might have been 
anything requiring no muscle, and there are so 
many varieties of such professions. An insurance 
agent, but he was too busy and taciturn ; a commis- 
sion agent, but he was alone; a cheap oculist, but 
he would not be free at this hour. I therefore 
gave it up at once. 

''He's a conjurer," said the man. "Not on the 
stage ; goes out to parties and smokers." 

I expressed the necessary amount of surprise 
and satisfaction. 

"Odd what different things men do," he con- 
tinued. "There's all sorts of trades, isn't there? 
I often sit for hours watching men and wondering 
what they are. Sometimes you can tell easily. A 
carpenter, for instance, often has a rule pocket in 
his trousers that you can spot. A lawyer's clerk 
has a certain way with him. Horses always leave 
their mark on men, and you can tell coachmen 
even in plain clothes. But there's many to baffle 
you." 

"Yes," I said, "it needs a Sherlock Holmes." 

"And yet there's some to puzzle even him," 
said my man. "Now what do you think he'd 
make of me?" 

Upon my word I couldn't say. He was just the 

ordinary artisan, with a little thoughtfulness added. 

A small, pale man, grizzled and neat, but the 

clothes were* old. The shininess and bagginess of 

231 



Old Lamps for New 

the knees suggested much kneeling; nothing else 
gave me a hint. 

"I give that up too," I said. 

"Well," he replied, ''I'll tell you, because you're 
a stranger. I'm a worm-holer." 

"A worm-holer?" 

"Yes, I make worm-holes in furniture to make 
it seem older and fetch a better price." 

"Great heavens !" I said; "I have heard of it, of 
course, but I never thought to meet a worm-holer 
face to face. How do you do it?" 

"It's not difficult," he said, "to make the actual 
holes. The trick is to make 'em look- real." 

"And what becomes of the furniture?" 

"America chiefly," he said. "They like old 
Enghsh things there, the older the better. Guar- 
anteed Tudor things will fetch anything ... we 
guarantee all ours." 

"And you have no conscience about it?" I 
asked. 

"None," he said. "Not any more. I had a 
little once, but there, the Americans are so happy 
with their finds it would be a shame to disappoint 
them. I look on myself as a benefactor to the 
nation now. I often lie awake at nights — I sleep 
badly — thinking of the collectors in U.S.A. hug- 
ging themselves with joy to think of the treasures 
I've made for them." 



232 



The Letter N ^^:^ ^:> ^^ir^- ^:^ '^:> ^^:> 

A Tragedy in High Life 

Extract from the copy of Harold Pippeit, only re- 
porter for ^^The Easthury Herald,'^ as handed 
to the compositor. 



INQUIRIES which have been made by one of 
our representatives yield the gratifying tid- 
ings that Kildin Hall, the superb Tudor residence 
vacated a year or so ago by Lord Glossthorpe, is 
again let. The new tenant, who will be a 
valued addition to the neighbourhood, is Mr. 
Michael Stirring, a retired banker. 



From "The Easthury Herald,'^ 2 Sept. 

Inquiries which have been made by one of our 
representatives yield the gratifying tidings that 
Kildin Hall, the superb Tudor residence vacated 
a year or so ago by Lord Glossthorpe, is again let. 
The new tenant, who will be a valued addition to 
the neighbourhood, is Mr. Michael Stirring, a re- 
tired baker. 

233 



Old Lamps for New 
III 

Mr, Guy Lander, Estate Agent, to the Editor of 
''The Eastbury Her aid.'' 
Dear Ted, — There's a fearful bloomer in your 
paper this week, which you must put right as soon 
as you can. Mr. Stirring, who has taken Kildin, is 
not a baker, but a banker. Yours, G. L. 

IV 

The Editor of "The Eastbury Herald'' to Mr. Guy 
Lander. 
My Dear Guy, — Of course it's only a misprint. 
Pippett wrote "banker" right enough, and the 
ass of a compositor dropped out the "n. " I'll put 
it right next week. No sensible person would 
mind. Yours, Edward Hedges. 



Mrs. Michael Stirring to the Editor of "The East- 
bury Herald." 
Sir, — My attention has been called to a very 
serious misstatement in your paper for Saturday last. 
It is there stated that my husband, Mr. Michael 
Stirring, who has taken Kildin Hall, is a retired 
baker. This is absolutely false. Mr. Stirring is 
a retired banker, than which nothing could be 
much more different. Mr. Stirring is at this mo- 
ment too ill to read the papers, and the slander 

234 



The Letter N 

will therefore be kept from him a little longer, but 
what the consequences will be when he hears of 
it I tremble to think. Kindly assure me that 
you will give the denial as much publicity as the 
falsehood. Yours faithfully, 

Augusta Stirring. 

VI 

The Editor of ^^The Easthury HeraW^ to Mrs. 
Michael Stirring. 
The Editor of ''The Eastbury Herald" presents 
his compliments to Mrs. Stirring and begs to ex- 
press his profound regret that the misprint of 
which she complains should have crept into his 
paper. That it was a misprint and not an inten- 
tional misstatement he has the reporter's copy to 
prove. He will, of course, insert in the next 
issue of "The Eastbury Herald" a paragraph 
correcting the error, but he would point out to 
Mrs. Stirring that it was also stated in the para- 
graph that Mr. Stirring would be a valued addition 
to the neighbourhood. 

VII 

Mrs. Stirring to the Editor of "The Eastbury 

Herald. ^^ 

Sir, — Whatever the cause of the slander, whether 

malice or misadventure, the fact remains that you 

have done a very cruel thing. I enclose a cutting 

235 



Old Lamps for New 

from the London Press, sent me by a friend, which 
will show you that the calumny is becoming widely 
spread. Mr. Stirring is so weak and dispirited 
that we fear he may have got some inkling of it. 
Your position if he discovers the worst will be ter- 
rible. 

I am, Yours faithfully, 

Augusta Stirring. 

(The Enclosure) 

From ^^The Morning Star'' 

Signs of the Times 

We get the new movement in a nutshell in the 

report from Eastbury that Lord Glossthorpe has 

let his historic house to a retired baker named 

Stirring, etc., etc. 

VIII 

From "The Eastbury Herald,'' 9 Sept. 
Erratum. — In our issue last week an unfortu- 
nate misprint made us state that the new tenant of 
Kildin Hall was a retired baker. The word was 
of course banker. 

IX 

Mr. John Bridger, Baker, to the Editor of "The 
Eastbury Herald." 
Dear Hedges, — I was both pained and surprised 
to find a man of your principles and a friend of 
236 



The Letter N 

mine writing of bakers as you did this week. Why 
should you "of course" have meant a banker? 
Why cannot a retired baker take a fine house if he 
wants to ? I am thoroughly ashamed of you, and 
wish to withdraw my advertisement from your 
paper. Yours truly, John Bridger. 



Messrs. Greenery b" Bills, Steam Bakery, Dum- 

hridge. 

Dear Sir, — After the offensive slur upon bakers 

in the current number of your paper we feel that 

we have no other course but to withdraw our 

advertisement; so please discontinue it from this 

date. 

Yours faithfully. 

Greenery & Bills. 

XI 

Mrs. Stirring to the Editor of "The Eastbury 
Herald." 
Sir, — I fear you have not done your best to check 
the progress of your slanderous paragraph, since 
only this morning I received the enclosed. You 
will probably not be surprised to learn that through 
your efforts the old-world paradise of Kildin, in 
which we had hoped to end our days, has been 
rendered impossible. We could not settle in a 
new neighbourhood wuth such an initial handicap. 
Yours truly, Augusta Stirring. 

237 



Old Lamps for New 

(The Enclosure) 

From ^^The Daily Leader ^^ 

The Triumph of Democracy 

After lying empty for nearly two years Lord 
Glossthorpe's country seat has been let to a retired 
baker named Stirring, etc., etc. 

XII 

Mrs. Michael Stirring to Mr. Guy Lander. 
Dear Sir, — After the way that the good name 
and fame of my husband and myself have been 
poisoned both in the local and the London Press, we 
cannot think further of coming to live at Kildin Hall. 
Every post brings from one or other of my friends 
some paragraph perpetuating the he. Kindly 
therefore consider the negotiations completely at 
an end. I am, Yours faithfully, 

Augusta Stirring. 

XIII 

The Editor of ^^The Easthury Her aid'' to Mr. 

John Bridger. 

Dear Bridger, — You were too hasty. A man 

has to do the best he can. When I wrote "of 

course," I meant it as a stroke of irony. In other 

words, I was, and am, and ever shall be, on your 

side. You will be glad to hear that in consequence 

of the whole thing I have got notice to leave, my 

238 



The Letter N 

proprietor being under obligations to Lord Gloss- 
thorpc, and you may therefore restore your patron- 
age to "The Herald" with a clear conscience. 

Yours sincerely, Edward Hedges. 

XIV 

The Editor of ''The Easthtiry Herald'' to Mrs. 
Stirring. 

The Editor of "The Eastbury Herald" presents 
his compliments to Mrs. Stirring for the last time, 
and again assures her that the whole trouble grew 
from the natural carelessness of an overworked 
and underpaid compositor. He regrets sincerely 
the unhappiness which that mistake has caused, 
and looks forward to a day when retired bakers 
and retired bankers will be considered as equally 
valuable additions to a neighbourhood. In retire- 
ment, as in the grave, he Ukes to think of all men 
as equal. With renewed apologies for the foul 
aspersion which he cast upon Mr. and Mrs. Stirring, 
he begs to conclude. 

P.S. — Mrs. Stirring will be pleased to hear that 
not only the writer but the compositor are under 
notice to leave. 



239 



The New Chauffeur ^:^ ^;^ ^^^ ^;:> 

{An Impossible Dialogue) 
JPUPLOYER. And now as to wages. What do you 
want? 

Chaufeur. Forty pounds a year and all found. 

E. And what do you expect to do for that ? 

C. To keep the car in good order and drive 
you out in it. 

E. Yes. You must excuse me asking so much, 
but you see I don't know you at all. What kind 
of a temper have you? 

C. Very good. 

E. Yes, of course. But I mean what kind of 
temper have you when you are told suddenly, late 
on a wet night, to go to the station ? 

C. Very good. 

E. Always? 

C. Certainly. 

E. Well, I want you to be quite sure. Is your 
temper so perfect that if I were to offer you 
another £5 a year to secure this point about un- 
expected runs in bad weather and so forth, it would 
make no difference ? 

C. I think it might make a difference. 
240 



The New Chauffeur 

E. And 3-011 would stand by the bargain? Never 
for a moment go back on it ? 

C. No. 

E. Then we will say £45. And one other 
point. There are some chauffeurs so poor spirited 
that on an open road with no danger they will go 
at only, say, twelve miles an hour. You are not 
hke that, are you ? 

C. Certainly not. 

E. You hate going slow ? 

C. Yes. 

E. Ah, then, that settles it, for a chauffeur who 
objects to go slow is no good to me. You see, 
I often want to go slow: in fact, always when it 
is very dusty and we are near cottage gardens. 

C. Yes ; but, of course, if you wished it 

E. You said you hated it. Now, an unwilling 
servant is the last thing I require. 

C. But 

E. You mean that you could get over your 
disHke and become willing to meet my wishes? 

C. Yes. 

E. But wiUingness must be more spontaneous 
than that. Suppose we were to fix it up now ab- 
solutely, would you continue in that frame? You 
would always be willing? 

C. Always. 

E. Then shall we say another £5 a year? That 
makes £50. 

R 241 



Old Lamps for New 

C. Thank you very much. 

E. Oh, no, not at all. It's a commercial trans- 
action. I want what you are prepared to sell. 
There is one other point. What kind of an expres- 
sion do you wear when you are told by your em- 
ployer to take out for a drive certain of his poorer 
friends who cannot afford more than a small tip, 
if any? 

C. I am perfectly content. 

E. Perfectly? 

C. Well, of course, one prefers to drive one's 
own employer. 

E. Ah ! — but supposing I wished all your pas- 
sengers to be of equal importance and interest to 
you ? There is no pleasure in a drive if the driver 
is sullen. Have you ever thought of that? 

C. Never. 

E. You see it now ? 

C. Yes, I see it now. 

E. And if I were to add another £5 it would 
guarantee the smile? 

C. Absolutely. 

E. Very well, then, that makes it £55. We 
will leave it at that. You will begin on Monday. 



242 



The Fir-tree ; Revised Version ^^^ ^^ 

{Too Long after Hans Andersen) 

ONCE upon a lime there grew a fir-tree in a 
great Newfoundland forest. 

It had a dehghtful life ; the rain fell on it and 
nourished its roots ; the sun shone on it and warmed 
its heart ; now and then came a great jolly wind 
to wrestle with it and try its strength. The peas- 
ant children would sit at its foot and play their 
games and sing their Httle songs, and the birds 
roosted or sheltered in its branches. Often the 
squirrels frolicked there. 

But the tree, although everything was so happy 
in its surroundings, was not satisfied. It longed 
to be something else. It longed to be, as it said, 
important in the world. 

"Well," said the next tree to it, "you will be 
important ; we all shall. Nothing is so important 
as the mast of a ship." 

But the tree would not have it. "The mast 
of a ship!" he said. "Pooh! I hope to be 
something better than that." 

Every year the surveyors came and marked a 

243 



Old Lamps for New- 
number of the taller trees, and then wood-cutters 
arrived and cut them down and lopped ofif their 
branches and dragged them away to the ship- 
builders. The tree disdainfully watched them go. 

And then one day the surveyor came and made 
a mark on its bark. 

"Ha! ha!" said a neighbour, "now you're 
done for." 

But the tree laughed slyly. "I know a trick 
worth two of that," he said, and he induced a 
squirrel to rub off the mark with its tail, so that 
when the wood-cutters came it was not felled 
after all. 

"Oh," said the swallows when they came back 
next year, "you here still?" 

"Surely," said the tree conceitedly. "They 
tried to get me, but I was too clever for them." 

"But don't you want to be a mast," they said, 
"and hold up the sails of a beautiful ship, and 
swim grandly all about the seas of the world, 
and lie in strange harbours, and hear strange 
voices?" 

"No," said the tree, "I don't. I dislike the sea. 
It is monotonous. I want to assist in influencing 
the world. I want to be important." 

"Don't be so silly," said the swallows. 

And then the tree had his wish, for one day 
some more wood-cutters came; but, instead of 
picking out the tallest and straightest trees, as 
244 



The Fir-tree ; Revised Version 

they had been used to, they cut down hundreds 
just as they came to them. 

"Look out," said the swallows. "You'll be 
cut down now whether you want it or not." 

"I want it," said the tree. "I want to begin 
to influence the world." 

"Very well," said a wood-cutter, "you shall," 
and he gave the trunk a great blow with his axe, 
and then another and another, until down it fell. 

"You won't be a mast," he added, "never fear. 
Nothing so useful ! You're going to make paper, 
my friend." 

"What is paper?" asked the tree of the swal- 
lows as they darted to and fro over its branches. 

"We don't know," they said, "but we'll ask 
the sparrows." 

The sparrows, who knew, told the tree. "Paper," 
they said, "is the white stuff that men read from. 
It used to be made from rags; but it's made from 
trees now because it's cheaper." 

"Then will people read me?" asked the tree. 

"Yes," said the sparrows. 

The tree nearly fainted with rapture. 

"But only for a few minutes," added the spar- 
rows. "You're going to be newspaper paper, not 
book paper." 

"All the same," said the tree, "I might have 
something worth reading on me, mightn't I? 
Something beautiful or grand." 

245 



Old Lamps for New 

"You might," said the sparrows, "but it isn't 
very Hkely." 

Then the men came to haul the tree away. 
Poor tree, what a time it had ! It was sawed into 
logs, and pushed, with thousands of others, into a 
pulping machine, and the sap oozed out of it, and 
it screamed with agony; and then by a dozen 
different processes, all extremely painful, it was 
made into paper. 

Oh, how it wished it was still growing on the 
hillside with the sun and the rain, and the children 
at its foot, and the birds and squirrels in its 
branches. "I never thought the world would be 
like this," it said. And the other trees in the 
paper all around it agreed that the world was an 
overrated place. 

And the tree went to sleep and dreamed it was 
a mast, and woke up crying. 

Then it was rolled into a long roll five miles 
long and put down into the hold of a ship, and 
there it lay all forlorn and sea-sick for a week. 
A dreadful storm raged overhead — the same wind 
that had once tried its strength on the hillside — 
and as they heard it all the trees in the paper 
groaned as they thought of the life of the forest 
and the brave days that were gone. 

The worst of it was that the roll in which our tree 
lay was close by the foot of the mast, which came 
through the hold just here, and he found that they 
246 



The Fir-tree ; Revised Version 

were old friends. The mast said he could think 
of no life so pleasant as that of a mast. ''One 
has the sun all day," he said, "and the stars all 
night ; one carries men and merchandise about the 
world ; one lies in strange harbours and sees 
strange and entertaining sights. One is influenc- 
ing the world all the time." 

At these words the tree wept again. But he 
made an effort to be comforted. "You v/ouldn't 
suggest," he inquired timidly, "that a mast was 
as important, say, as a newspaper?" 

The mast laughed till he shook. "Well, I like 
that," he said. "Why, a newspaper — a newspaper 
only lasts a day, and everything in it is contra- 
dicted and corrected the day after ! A mast goes 
on for years. And another thing," he added, 
"which I forgot: sometimes the captain leans 
against it. The captain ! Think of that." 

But the tree was too miserable. 

In the harbour it was taken out of the ship and 
flung on the wharf, and then it was carried to the 
warehouse, below a newspaper ofBce in London. 
What a difference from Newfoundland, where there 
was air and light. Here it was dark and stuffy, 
and the rolls talked to each other with tears in 
their voices. 

And then one night the roll in which our poor 
tree found himself was carried to the printing- 
rooms and fixed in the press, and down came the 
247 



Old Lamps for New 

heavy, messy type on it, all black and suffocating, 
and when the tree came to itself in the light again 
it was covered with words. 

But, alas ! the sparrows were right, for they 
were not beautiful words or grand words, but such 
words as, ''Society Divorce Case," and "Double 
Suicide at Margate," and "Will it be fine to- 
morrow?" and "Breach of Promise: Comic 
Letters," and "The Progress of the Strike," and 
"Terrible Accident near Paris," and "Grisly 
Discovery at Leeds," and "Bankruptcy of Peer's 
Cousin," and "Burglary at Potter's Bar," and 
"More Government Lies"; and there were offers 
of a thousand pounds and smaller sums to cottagers 
for the best bunch of Sweet WilHams, bringing to 
myriad simple homes in England, where flowers 
had been loved for their own sake, the alloy of 
avarice. 

"Oh, dear," sighed the tree as it realized what 
it was bearing on its surface, "how I wish I had 
gone to sea as I was meant to do !" And he 
vowed that if ever he got out of this dreadful 
life he would never be headstrong again. But 
alas ! — 

Then, cut and folded, it was, with others like 
it, carried away in the cold, grey morning to a 
railway station bookstall, and a man bought it for 
a halfpenny and read it all through, and said there 
was nothing in it, and threw it under the seat, 
248 



The Fir-tree ; Revised Version 

and later another man found it and read it, and 
blew choking tobacco over it, and then wrapped 
up some fish in it, and took it home to his family. 
All that night it lay scrunched up on the floor of 
a squalid house, feeling very faint from the smell 
of fish, and longing for Newfoundland and the sun 
and the rain, and the children and the birds. 

And the next morning an untidy woman lit the 
fire with it. It was an unimportant fire, and 
went out directly. 



249 



The Life Spherical ^^ ^;> ^;:> ^;:> ^oy 

IT was a beautiful September day, and they 
floated softly over green Surrey. 

"And this is England!" said the foreigner. 'T 
am indeed glad to be here at last, and to come in 
such a way." 

*'You could not," the other replied, "have 
chosen a more novel or entertaining means of 
seeing the country for the first time," 

They leaned over the edge of the basket and 
looked down. The earth was spread out like a 
map: they could see the shape of every meadow, 
penetrate every chimney. 

"How beautiful," said the foreigner. "How 
orderly and precise. No wonder you con- 
quered the world, you English. How unresting 
you must be! But what," he went on, "is the 
employment of those men there, on that great 
space? Are they practising warfare? See how 
they walk in couples, followed by small boys 
bent beneath some burden. One stops. The boy 
gives him a stick. He seems to be addressing 
himself to the performance of a dehcate rite. See 
how he waves his hands. He has struck some- 
250 



The Life Spherical 

thing. See how they all move on together ; what 
purpose in their stride ! It is the same all over 
the place — men in pairs, pursuing or striking, and 
small bent boys following. Tell me what they are 
doing. Are they tacticians?" 

"No," said the other, "they are merely playing 
golf. That plain is called a golf links. There are 
thousands like that in England. It is a game, a 
recreation. These men are resting, recreating. 
You cannot see it because it is so small, but there 
is a little white ball which they hit." 

"The pursuit has no other purpose?" asked 
the foreigner. "It teaches nothing? It does not 
lead to military skill?" 

"No." 

"But don't the boys play too?" 

"Oh, no. They only carry." 

The foreigner was silent for a while, and then he 
pointed again. "See," he said, "that field with the 
white figures. I have noticed so many. What are 
they doing? One man runs to a spot and waves 
his arm ; another, some distance away, waves a club 
at something. Then he runs and another runs. 
They cross. They cross again. Some of the 
other figures run too. What does that mean? 
That surely is practice for warfare?" 

"No," said the other, "that is cricket. Cricket 
is also a game. There are tens of thousands of 
fields like that all over England, They are merely 

251 



Old Lamps for New 

playing for amusement. The man who waved his 
arm bowled a ball; the man who waved his club 
hit it. You cannot see the ball, but it is there." 

The stranger was silent again, A little later he 
drew attention to another field. "What is that?" 
he said. "There are men and girls with clubs all 
running among each other. Surely that is war. 
See how they smite ! What Amazons ! No wonder 
England leads the way!" 

"No," said the other, "that is hockey. An- 
other game." 

"And is there a ball there too?" he asked. 

"Yes," was the reply, "a ball." 

"But see the garden of that house," he re- 
marked; "that is not hockey. There are only 
four, but two are women. They also leap about and 
run and wave their arms. Is there a ball there?" 

"Yes," was the reply, "there is a ball there. 
That is lawn tennis." 

"But the white lines," he said. "Is not that, 
perhaps, out-door mathematics? That surely may 
help to serious things?" 

"No," the other replied, "only another game. 
There are millions of such gardens in England 
with similar lines." 

"Yes," he said, for they were then over Sur- 
biton, "I see them at this moment by the hundred." 

They passed on to London. It was at that 
time of September when football and cricket 
252 



The Life Spherical 

overlap, and there was not only a crowded cricket 
match at the Oval but an even more crowded 
football match at Blackheath. 

The foreigner caught sight of the Oval first. 
"Ah," he said, "you deceived mc. For here 
is your cricket again, played amid a vast con- 
course. How can you call it a game? These 
crowds would not come to see a game played, but 
would play one themselves. It must be more than 
you said ; it must be a form of tactics that can 
help to retain England's supremacy, and these 
men are here to learn." 

"No," said the other, "no. It is just a game. 
In England we not only like to play games, but 
to see them played." 

It was then that the stranger noticed Black- 
heath. "Ah, now I have you!" he cried. "Here 
is another field and another crowd; but this is 
surely a battle. See how they dash at each other. 
And yes, look, one of them has had his head cut 
off and the other kicks it. Splendid !" 

"No," said the other, "that is no head, that is 
a ball. Just a ball. It is a game, like the others." 

He groaned. "Then I cannot see," he said at 
last, "how England won her victories and became 
supreme." 

"Ah," said the other, "at the time that Eng- 
land was winning her victories and climbing into 
supremacy, the ball was not her master." 

253 



Four Fables ^=^ ^^ ^^^ "^^^ ^'^^^ ^^ 

I. — The Stopped Clock 

ONCE upon a time there was a discredited 
politician whose nostrums no longer took 
any one in. And being thrown out of office he 
wandered about, seeking, like many men before 
him, for comfort and consolation among his in- 
feriors. These, however, failing him, he passed 
on to the lower animals, and from them to the 
inanimate, until he came one day to a clock which, 
the works having been removed, consisted only of 
a case, a face, and two hands. 

*'Ha," said the politician, as he stood before it, 
"at last I have found something beyond question 
and argument more useless than myself. For you, 
my friend, are done. I, at any rate, still have life 
and movement. I can speak and act; I have a 
function still to perform in the world; whereas 
you are a mockery and a sham." 

"Kindly," the clock replied, "refrain from 
associating me with yourself. I decline the com- 
parison. Lifeless I may be, but not useless. For 
two separate moments every day I am absolutely 
right, and for some minutes approximately right; 

254 



Four Fables 

whereas you, sir, are, have been, and will be, con- 
sistently wrong." 

II. — Truth and Another 

She came towards me rather dubiously, as 
though not sure of her reception. 

"Who are you?" I asked. 

"Truth," she said. 

I apologized for not having realized it. 

"Never mind," she said wearily, "hardly any- 
one knows me. I'm always having to explain who 
I am, and lots of people don't understand then." 

A little later I met her again. 

"Well I shan't make any mistake this time," I 
said. "How are you. Miss Truth?" 

"You are misinformed," she replied coldly; 
"my name is Libel." 

"But you're exactly like Truth," I exclaimed — 
"exactly!" 

"Hush !" she said. 

III. — The Exemplar 

Once upon a time there was a little boy who 
had a fit of naughtiness. He refused to obey his 
nurse and was, as she said afterwards, that ob- 
streperous that her life for about half an hour was 
a burden. At last, just as she was in despair, a 
robin fluttered to the window-sill of the nursery 
and perched on it, peeping in. 

255 



Old Lamps for New 

"There," said the nurse, "look at that dear 
little birdie come to see what all the trouble's 
about. He's never refused to have his face washed 
and made clean, I know. I'd be ashamed to cry 
and scream before a little pretty innocent like 
that, that I would." 

Now this robin, as it happened, was a poison- 
ously wicked little bird. He was greedy and 
jealous and spiteful. He continually fought other 
and weaker birds and took away their food ; he 
pecked sparrows and tyrannized over tits. He 
habitually ate too much; and quite early in life 
he had assisted his brothers and sisters in putting 
both their parents to death. 

None the less the spectacle of his pretty red 
breast and bright eye shamed and soothed the little 
boy so that he became quite good again. 

IV. — The Good Man and Cupid 

There was once a good and worthy man, a 
minister of the gospel and an altruist of intense 
activity, who was grievously distressed by the un- 
happy marriages in his neighbourhood. He saw 
young men who ought (as he thought) to marry 
Jane and Eliza leading to the altar Violet and 
Erniyntrude ; and young women fitted to be wise 
helpmates to John and Richard setting their caps 
at Reginald and Hughie; the result being the 
256 



Four Fables 

usual bickerings and dissatisfactions of the ill- 
matched. 

The matter troubled him so seriously that he 
joined a toxophilite club and took lessons in 
archery until he could hit the gold at five hundred 
yards twenty times in succession; and having 
reached this state of proficiency he called on Dan 
Cupid and expressed to that mischievous and un- 
covered boy his disapproval of the happy-go-lucky 
way in which he pulled his bow-string and directed 
his arrows, almost without looking. He then offered 
himself to shoot in Cupid's stead. 

"There may be something in what you say," 
Cupid replied; "at any rate >ou seem to be older 
and graver and possibly wiser than I, and you cer- 
tainly wear more clothes. Take the bow and 
try." 

The good man did so, and the next day or so he 
was very busy conscientiously transfixing the hearts 
of his parishioners. Such was the accuracy of his 
aim that he made only one slip, and that was when, 
in his endeavours to unite by puncture the cardiac 
penumbras of pretty little Lizzie Porter and Mr. 
Godfrey Bloom, his eye faltered, and instead Mr. 
Godfrey Bloom was paired with the exceedingly 
unprepossessing Dorothea Atkins, who happened 
to be standing close by. 

The good man did all that was possible to re- 
pair the mischief which he felt his lapse has caused ; 
s 257 



Old Lamps for New 

but it was in vain, and Miss Lizzie Porter never 
regained her chance. 

"Well," said Cupid, as he strolled into the good 
man's garden a few years after, "how has your 
shooting turned out ? Perfectly, I suppose." 

"No," the good man replied with a sigh, "I am 
afraid not. As a matter of fact the only happy 
brace in the whole bag are Godfrey and Dorothea." 

"Quite so," said the little fellow. "I expected 
it. I always felt those archery lessons were a mis- 
take." 

"Then what is to be done?" asked the good 
man. "What is to be done if neither taking aim 
nor shooting at random avails?" 

"Nothing," said Cupid as he fitted an arrow to 
the string. "Nothing. One just goes on shoot- 
ing and hopes for the best." 



258 



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A Novel 

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istener's Lure 

Kensington Comedy 

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Anthologies of Varied Charm Collected by E. V. LUCAS 

The Gentlest Art 

A Choice of Letters by Entertaining Hands 

An anthology of letter writing, so human, interesting, and amus- 
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The Ladies' Pageant 



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Some Friends of Mine 

A Rally of Men 

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A Wanderer in London 

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and thirty-six reproductions of great pictures 

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" It is hard to imagine a pleasanter book of its kind." — Cou- 
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fine analysis in the penetration that sees often a suggestion of 
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cultivated traveller has felt and perhaps been unable to put 
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Character and Comedy 

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One Day and Another 

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Anne's Terrible Good Nature 

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Three Hundred Games and Pastimes 

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